


Learning to Read

by LadyDeme



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: A Scattering of Light Yearning, Angst, Blue-Lions Typical Mental Illness, But Not Too Platonic, By Which I Mean More So Than In Canon, Canon Compliant, Dedue Molinaro Needs a Hug, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd Needs a Hug, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fluff, Grief, Just Hug All These Children, M/M, Mostly Platonic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Racism, These Kids Will Not Really Figure That Out Here, Tragedy of Duscur, Trauma, awkward teenagers, developing feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-01-13 16:43:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21177221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyDeme/pseuds/LadyDeme
Summary: A series of 26 alphabetically-titled vignettes examining the period where, in the wake of The Tragedy of Duscur, Dimitri taught Dedue to read: a time in which they learned about each other, and the rules of their relationship, perhaps more than about books.





	1. A is for Ambiguity

Dedue’s eyes, stony and cool as pale jade, cut through the haze like a beacon. Dimitri, forced to move as if through a dust-storm, couldn’t quite pull his gaze away. The days had ground on into weeks, the weeks approaching a moon now -- and so, time’s wheels had crushed into dust the mad, magical thought that Dimitri would turn the corner and everyone would be alive. The hallways of the castle were thick with the fine powder that, hovering in the air, dispersed the light into a million little motes. The hope still crept back in at times, crueler than ever, but mostly it had died, leaving him hungry for another thought, another hope, another way to pull himself forward after the tragedy. But because he could see the eyes of the boy he’d saved that day in Duscur -- after the attack, before anything but the monstrous vengeance of soldiers, during blood and fire still burning under Dimitri’s scarred skin -- that was at least something to watch over. And he needed to.

How like a mountain, those squared-off features! A cliffside, stony and impassive, looming up somewhere well beyond Dimitri’s head. Dedue had feelings, whatever that placid face he wore now proclaimed -- these few weeks had been too intense. They’d shown glimpses of a heart holding itself desperately together. Dedue had cried with him and apart from him. Dedue had reached for him like a lifeline, with eyes full of fear. Dedue’s shoulders had softened with relief when Dimitri suggested that Dedue might be able to secure a place with him by entering his service -- informally agreed to, a few days out from all the ritual that would make it legal, indisputable fact.

But when those moments passed, Dedue’s thoughts became locked behind that face. Now, as they walked down the hallway in one of the castle’s upper floors, it might as well have been a sculpture in brown marble. There wasn’t an absence, Dimitri was sure of it: his eyes stared with a pain Dimitri understood too well. They had both lost everything. No, Dedue had lost far more. But what Dedue wanted in repayment for that, really wanted, Dimitri couldn’t see. If he had anxiety or trepidation of what they were planning, DImitri couldn’t see. If Dedue was really only here out of some false obligation or survival instinct, some basic need for a place to live and food on his table that would have taken anything, Dimitri couldn’t see.

Dedue cleared his throat. He’d come to a stop behind the lagging, shaking steps of the prince. Dimitri’s efforts to guide him to a particular set of rooms had run afoul of Dimitri’s peering, his searching, up at the gangly young boy behind him.

“Are you tired?” He leaned down slightly, bringing the face Dimitri had been staring at for the last two corridors close enough that Dimitri could spot its dark shadows and see in Dedue’s eyes his own reflection.

It didn’t look much like him anymore, Dimitri thought. The weeks following the tragedy had drawn his skin more snugly to his bones, burning away some of his childhood softness. It didn’t belong to a man, not by a long shot -- but nor was it the face of a sweet young maiden, as someone had once called him. It was too hollow, too sunken, too shadowed.  _ I’m a corpse now. Maybe I didn’t survive after all.  _ The thought bobbled around, unbidden and tinged with regret that soothed and relief that pricked his heart in a delirious blur of feelings.

“...I must be,” Dimitri said hopefully. Recovery was frustratingly slow going; It was true that he wasn’t always sure his legs would hold him and his head hurt from bad sleep. His injuries -- from a mix of fire and blades and being knocked around the center of violent chaos where coaches had been knocked onto their sides and horses had gone wild -- had been so severe that for some time he was mostly bound to his bed (time had come unspooled. His sleep was shallow, fitful, occasionally medically-induced; poor punctuation on his days and nights that only served to muddle moments into paste). He’d gotten out for his father’s funeral, but that had been about it until the last few days, where he’d been allowed to walk around some. He couldn’t nearly call himself fully healed. He shifted the sling that carried his broken left arm in its splint and wax plaster, causing spots in his vision to rise up with the fresh pain. Bad. OK. Bad. His knees agreed, quavering under him as he took a step -- or tried; the step somehow didn’t align, his foot hitting the ground far later, far further ahead, far more shallowly than expected. He didn’t fall, but slipped and sank, shaky as a baby deer. Dedue’s arms reached out for him, but he’d leant against the wall first. 

“We can stop. It is not important,” Dedue decided after watching the wobbly prince. 

“Dedue, you cannot be serious. It’s important that you have a room; you cannot just keep sleeping in whatever space is available.” Dimitri was really hoping that Dedue’s expression would show a hint, just a trace, of humor. He actually had no idea what humor looked like on him. But he wouldn’t be learning now. If anything -- maybe concern, in the little furrow of Dedue’s silver-white brows? His mouth hadn’t changed at all, his eyes perfectly grave. 

Dedue had come back with him from Duscur -- which, now, nearly a whole moon later, made Dimitri feel guilty. He hadn’t been thinking straight -- all that had been in mind was that if Dedue vanished from his sight, he had failed; Dedue was dead; he was alone. He’d clung to Dedue, the idea of Dedue, as tightly as he could. And Dedue had seemed to do the same, seemed to share that fraction of understanding of what had happened to them both, seemed to want to go with him and out of the madness and bloodshed that had been his home. So it hadn’t even occurred to Dimitri to think it selfish at the time. How shameful; while he was bedbound, with his uncle in charge, with -- with things being as they seemed to be now, there’d been so little he could do to provide for the boy he’d dragged across a country. Dimitri could ensure he was allowed to stay, but not keep a watchful eye on  _ where _ he stayed, or how people treated him. He’d heard snippets, seen traces in bruises and exhaustion. He didn’t like them.

But! Things were different now! Surely, right? They had to be.

“The room is still ready. I can wait to see it.” 

Dimitri righted himself, letting out a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d held in him.

“I can rest later, after I’ve shown you there. Really. It won’t be too hard,” Dimitri insisted. Dedue’s brow tightened, and he stooped down close again. Dedue was cruelly a tall for only being a year older, a figure of shoulders and elbows and great stretches of long bone, held up on a large, unfilled frame. He was taller than most grown men Dimitri knew -- taller than Gustave, taller than Rodrigue, taller than his father. Dimitri was still called cute and doll-like by people, and it just wasn’t fair. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t change that. It was as if no amount of strength or skill would make people stop calling him cute until he grew taller. ...But then, what did it really matter anymore? Even that indignation rattled around in his chest without hitting any real feeling. Dedue offered the prince his arm.

“Then please, let me help.” It wasn’t until Dimitri accepted the arm, leaning against Dedue’s left side, that Dedue’s brow unfurrowed, and Dimitri himself felt a little wave of relief. They set back off again, coming before one finely-carved oak door in particular. It wouldn’t have been distinguishable from any other in the wing, save in its exact location.

“Ah, I’m sorry… “ Dimitri bit down the waves of apologies that crowded on his tongue. There was so much he ought to say, and could never say. Not to the living. “You’ve followed where we are right now, right? In relation to other places in the castle, I mean.”

“Hmmm…” Dedue closed his eyes and considered it. They were two turns from the staircase that ran through the wings of the castle’s personal quarters, where the windows shed beams of bright afternoon light from the west into the rooms. The first floor was for more common servants that kept the castle running, near to their work. The third, where they were, was for slightly more rarified staff -- the chief butler, the head maid, the Sensechal, and key members of the king’s personal guard -- it was an incredibly dizzying experience, Dimitri had found, walking through these halls and finding them so empty. Many residents of this floor had been ground away into nothing, too burnt to even bury. But the second, directly below… “...It is similar to the way to your rooms from the same stairs.” Dimitri nodded. 

  
“Excellent. This room is directly above mine. It’s meant for my chief retainer.” Dimitri had asked a few maids to clean it up the day before, after Dedue had agreed that he would enter Dimitri’s service-- and thus, earned a right to this room. It had belonged to Dimitri’s nurse, when he was younger, and most people would have assumed its next occupant would be Felix. But now, that would never happen, not for the future Duke Fraldarius (even Glenn had had a separate suite of rooms that fit his station even when acting as a knight). And so it was free for Dedue. A mixed feeling rose up in Dimitri’s heart as he removed his hand from Dedue’s arm to retrieve a roll of blue velvet from his belt-pouch.

“I can’t accept this.” Dedue’s eyes widened as they flicked across the velvet roll, Dimitri, the door. He didn’t sound mad, but when he settled on Dimitri, he wound tense, shoulders squaring so tightly they tugged at Dimitri’s heart.

“Oh.” Oh.  _ Oh _ . His thoughts skipped briefly. This was Dedue working up the nerve, wasn’t it? He really wasn’t comfortable. Maybe he’d rather be somewhere else -- he almost certainly wanted to be doing something else. He needed something else. Of course he did. Oh. Dimitri’s cheeks went first pink, then flushed so red the color reached his ears. How embarrassing.

“Ah. I see. I… I apologize, Dedue. Of course, I understand. I don’t want to force you to do something you weren’t comfortable with only out of need or some whim of mine,” Dimitri’s mouth went on more or less without him.. He was disappointed. He was mortified. And in a way deeper than his wobbly steps, his aching back, his sleepless headache -- a hollow exhaustion rang through him like he was a bell being struck. “I won’t be mad about having to change plans; I’m sure we can think of, well, something for you, please, don’t worry.”

“...Dimitri…” Dedue’s face went momentarily into a state slightly too neutral for Dimitri to grasp, not while Dimitri was trying to hold on in spite of the blow. “...Did I do something so wrong?”

“Huh?” 

The face resolved itself into worried brows, an anxious tightness to his eyes. A hurt.

“I am...unfamiliar with such things. But if there is something for you to be mad about...” 

What? Huh? What? Dimitri’s brain sputtered out against the seemingly mutual confusion. He had to stop himself from squeezing the roll of velvet, or its contents would be useless. Instead he leaned against Dedue, body going slack.

“...Dedue, what do you mean?” “Please, could you explain?” They asked each other in near-unison. Dimitri’s head drooped forward as he sighed.

“...I think. I may have gotten -- well, a little carried away.” That stung to say “What I mean to ask is, what are you refusing? No, is this truly what you wish to do with your future? To serve me and stay here in that way? It might be hard, you know. I don’t want to limit you, but I don’t know if I am, and I know that there’s... a lot of convenience in simply going along with what I say. But I want to ensure you that you don’t have to. I’ll do whatever I can for you, regardless.” 

Dedue nearly took a step back, but caught himself before he could pull Dimitri along. Instead, he reared higher a little, the motion hanging incomplete and silent in the air while he eyed Dimitri.

“If you tell me this is how I might freely stand by your side and be of use to you, protect you as you protected me, then it is enough.” Dedue’s answer contained such certainty that it might have slathered itself over Dimitri’s injuries like a balm. “That is what I have to do… What I want to do. I’m sorry if I made you think otherwise.” 

“...I’m glad,” Dimitri sheepishly admitted. He couldn’t put words to the relief that he felt, the sense of spinning whirlpools suddenly smoothing out into calm waters. He could keep knowing Dedue was alive. He didn’t have to keep falling. “I apologize for the confusion… But what’s wrong with this room, if that’s what you’re refusing?”

Dedue averted his eyes. Was that a tinge of color on his cheeks, or a trick of the lamplight? 

“I am... “ He paused, trying to parse the sentiment. “Not the person for such an honor.” 

“How so?”

“To be called chief among your men is…” Dedue couldn’t quite finish, only moved a hand vaguely, as if the gesture could sweep up all the things that made it beyond him. There was only air there.

“It’s what you will be, Dedue.” Dimitri’s surprise melted before he could speak -- and when his voice trembled with the change of mood, in its awkward, half-changed state, it cracked a little. Because -- no matter how you looked at it -- “You’re the only one left.” 

It burnt in his throat; the words smashed the world into fragments. But he had to. Everything was just a cloud of dust, a rolling fog. If he shut his eyes, it was gone. His breath caught itself higher and higher in his throat, jumping up it bit by bit like it was escaping him. 

“Dimitri...” Dedue’s voice was very low and rumbling. A hand hovered, its warmth radiant, over his shoulder. Then, a butterfly’s lightness -- it rested there.

“It’s nothing.” Dimitri blinked until he could see properly again.”I’m fine. What I mean is… It is the right room. It would be very nice to have you here, besides, and you deserve good quarters, you know.”

Dedue removed the hand from Dimitri’s shoulder quickly, and instead holding it out to accept the item in Dimitri’s hand. 

“Thank you. I am sorry to have upset you,” Dedue said, earnestly. Dimitri unrolled the velvet onto Dedue’s outsized hands, covering calluses with a deep blue field. And at the heart of that roll were two keys on an iron ring, one slightly larger than the other, carefully polished.

“The larger one is the key to the rooms; the smaller is for the passageway.” Dimitri pushed on without acknowledging that apology -- Dedue had nothing to apologize for, so keeping that topic alive would only make it hurt more.

“Passageway?” Dedue took the larger key as instructed and turned it in the lock at Dimitri’s nod. 

“Yes. Well, I suppose it would be easier to show you.” 

On the other side of the threshold was a large room, its walls panelled in a rich spruce wood and green plaster over the stone walls, which showed their true shapes around the curtained-off windows. Someone had lit a few oil lamps on the walls, and so they didn’t step into the darkness, but into puddles of lamplight that only lacked the glow of the fireplace’s fire. A broad green and brown rug covered the floor between the doorway and the 4-poster bed, keeping one away from the cold stone below. 

Dedue stepped warily into the center of the room. He gently touched the chest at the foot of the bed, running his hands over deer and bears carved into the wood. He turned to spot the fireplace, the end tables, the shelves on the walls, the tall and heavy wardrobe.

As he circled, Dimitri lowered himself into one of the chairs by the fireplace, resting as he’d promised, and focused himself on Dedue’s expression. Eyes wide. Mouth tense, but as it tended to be. The suspense of that expression seemed unbearable until Dimitri cleared his throat. 

“It’s a little bare, I suppose. Though it wouldn’t be difficult to fill it up to make it more comfortable…” Dimitri paused, trying to figure out what Dedue might want in a room. While this wasn’t lacking in any basic furnishings, it had nothing like personal effects. Dedue hadn’t been able to bring anything besides what he was wearing, and much of that was so burnt or damaged that it would be unlikely he could wear them again in anything like their original form. Dimitri didn’t know what had happened to them, only that he’d asked Gustave to please help, and Dedue had been wearing other borrowed clothes since. All that remained dangled from one ear, swaying as Dedue’s head moved. And Dimitri had no idea what could even hope to (not replace Dedue’s home, he wouldn’t insult either of them that way) help. Dedue had turned to look at him, and so -- “Weapons, perhaps?”

Wait, not everyone was interested in collecting weapons, even though they were so obviously interesting. It was important to respect other people’s preferences, after all. And Dimitri had always had more fun doing things than owning things outside of beautiful and interesting weapons, so now he wasn’t entirely sure what would suit.

“That...Please, do not worry about that.” Dedue came to stand by Dimitri’s chair. His mouth relaxed just a fraction, at last. “This is a wonderful room. I do not need much.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to think of something,” Whether he’d wanted it or not, he’d felt something in him untense at that answer. He could have melted into the chair, he was so tired. “A few books, perhaps? They’d go on the shelves nicely, and, well, the castle has a wonderful library!”

Dedue’s cool eyes flicked away, taking the turn of his head with them, dipping down. 

“...Ah. That would… Not be helpful.” Dedue shuffled awkwardly in place. “Reading is... not taught in Duscur often. I never learned.”

“Ah. I’m sorry, then.” There was a long and awkward silence that hung in the air, Dedue’s mouth moving slightly as if it were preparing a word and discarding it, Dimitri feeling like he’d stepped on something he ought to have known was there. While he’d heard the people of Duscur relied more than those of Fodlan on oral traditions and the teaching of parents, he thoughtlessly hadn’t considered what it  _ meant _ . He couldn’t even say he knew how many people in Fodlan could read -- what good was he supposed to be as a king, without knowing that sort of thing? He closed his eyes and considered the situation -- there wasn’t much he could do about the mistake, but about the actual reality… He could be helpful in that. “Would you like to learn now? It might be useful.”

“I don’t wish to trouble you,” Dedue answered, feeling out his words as if he were testing the strength of a bridge. “But I would not mind.”

“It wouldn’t trouble me at all. Even if my arm or other injuries recover soon, I don’t think I’ll be able to really train or have much exercise anytime soon. Something useful to do would be nice.” Yes, that was a thing he could do, even like this; a thing to take what would otherwise be hours of trying and failing to rest and fill them with activity would surely let his feet hit the ground again.

“Then I think I would like to try.” Dedue gave a grave nod. A small smile brightened Dimitri’s face as he started to ignore the various protests that resounded through him at the prospect of leaving his seat. His back, where the flesh wounds had been the worst, yowled and flashed in fresh pain when he gripped the chair’s arm to try and push himself upright.

“Great! We’ll get started…” His vision spun again. His head bobbed with a feeling that the little movement was so much vaster than it was. But he was, in his defense, on his feet -- and would stay on them. Still... “Tomorrow, I suppose.” 

To Dedue’s quiet, unreadable nod -- and the offer of his arm once again, which Dimitri waved off this time -- Dimitri elected to get to his final order of business.

“...I still haven’t shown you why this room, in particular, is for you.” Dimitri crossed the room, heading to a particular spot close to the wall that ought to have divided this room from the next. If you didn’t know what to look for, it looked like an ordinary wall panel. 

“There’s still something?” Dedue’s expression opened in what Dimitri hoped was the good sort of surprise -- or, perhaps, he wanted to be the good sort of surprise. 

“I mentioned a passageway, right?” Dedue nodded in response, but didn’t look like that had answered much of anything. Dimitri put his hand up on it. His hand. Hm. Yes. An experimental press informed him that, while he could feel the give it had, it wasn’t about to move how it should. That was a problem. “...I can’t open this with one hand.”

“What should I do?” Dedue hurried to stand just behind Dimitri, the heat of his body radiating onto Dimitri’s back in the slight chill of spring’s end, feeling all the more vivid against stiff joints and angry scabs. It was a strange comfort -- Dimitri had to ensure the fire was stoked in his room when he got back, if a little warmth like this was such a relief. His hand changed position and tapped a spot about an arm’s length (his arms, not Dedue’s, whose arm’s length would easily leave the panel behind) away from where his hand was, before it returned to his original position.

“And on three, you press up and back with me.” An affirming  _ hm _ . “One, two, three.” When they pushed, the panel lifted, slotting into a groove just a little further back from the wall that let them push it to the side. And behind that panel was a small hollow. A bell hung from the hollow’s ceiling, just above an old wooden door. Dedue might have to stoop to use it -- for reasons of stealth, it was not a tall door. Dimitri stepped out of the way.

“Please keep a close eye on the key to this door. It’d be… A little dangerous, if someone untrustworthy got their hands on it,” Dimitri said while Dedue picked up the smaller of his two new keys. 

“...I understand.” The click of the key in the lock, the swing of the door, the staircase down winding itself into view. The thin cord for the bell descended the staircase as well, vanishing into a quiet darkness. And at the bottom of that darkness was where the cord ended, in his room.

“I’ll ring for you, if it’s an emergency.” In case of emergencies, yes, of course. It had always been that way, or so it seemed, but looking back on it, Dimitri had called his nurse down for many trivial things. Embarrassing things, sometimes. Times he couldn’t get to sleep, or sick days, or times he’d woken up cold and lonely. It had been almost 7 years since those days, and he was 13, nearly an adult. That sort of childish coddling -- he shouldn’t want to have someone to call for that sort of thing again. 

He stared down at the worn stones, feeling the years of footsteps in a little groove marking the center of the stairs. If he said what he wanted, he didn’t want to see the moment Dedue thought of him as immature. He didn’t want to look up and guess what disappointment or pity would be written, even so faintly, on Dedue’s face. To see with perfect clarity that this wasn’t how he ought to bear this, when everyone was looking at him to be strong. As if he didn’t know.

“...But -- however, you’re free to come down, as you like.” No matter how hard he tried to keep his voice level, it didn’t wholly succeed. Instead, the quaver he carried echoed down the stairs, bouncing back up and shaking anew against each step. A flush rose on his face as much for that as anything. “The passage locks at my end as well, it’s the same key, but I… don’t intend to lock it.”

“It would be wiser to lock it.” Dedue’s voice didn’t give away that disappointment, that pity, that mockery. It didn’t give away anything, which told him everything. 

“I know that, I just...” The nights were colder and lonelier than ever -- and longer. He blinked and couldn’t see the stairs clearly, only a blurry tunnel of darkness that began at his feet. The night was still going on all around them. The world had come unravelled, and time had stopped meaning anything besides the slow pulverizing of hope. He just needed  _ something _ . 

“...However, I’m happy for the trust you’ve placed in me.” Something made Dimitri look up at that -- perhaps a little trace of nerves in the voice. Beyond the film of his tears, he knew what was there -- Dedue’s eyes, catching the light beyond the darkness, bright enough to cut through the shadows of the staircase.

“...I’m just glad to know you’re near.” Dimitri found it hard to read those eyes, the soft squint around their edges, the little squeeze that accompanied Dedue’s breath. But into that ambiguity Dimitri thought -- no, Dimitri hoped -- that he was as relieved as Dimitri was, to hear that said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for joining me on this journey of sad boys. 
> 
> Next Time: B is for Book, which is a relief because if we had to go too long without actually introducing literature, this would all start to be a little awkward.


	2. B is for Book

The library of Fhirdiad’s castle smelled of dust and old glue, looked slightly amber from its oakwood shelves and warm leather book-spines basking in the golden light of windows and covered lamps, felt the slight warmth of its hearth. Most of the library’s chairs were crowded around it, even as spring was beginning to blend into summer. This kept the eyes of the librarians on their books or on the fire – and off Dedue. Strangers’ gazes had scraped him to the bone since his arrival, worse than any look he’d endured before. At times where the faint shuffle of others was audible, but there were no accusing stares, Dedue felt a weight off of his shoulders. 

Dimitri hurried back to the table where they’d set up their materials – scrap paper, an inkwell, and a few quill pens. He’d asked Dedue wait a moment, and had vanished amid the bookshelves to return with a book in hand. Dedue stood up just a little too quickly, the chair banging against the ground on its way out from underneath him.

“If you needed something, I could have carried it.”

“I’m perfectly fine on my own. If I had a stack of books, I’m sure I’d ask for help,” answered the wholly unapologetic prince. To display his point, he waved it in the grip of his uninjured right arm. “This arm is fine; I hardly think it can be harmed by one little book.”

It was true. The book was not even a big one; its pages were larger than normal, but it was much thinner. Its back cover might have been thicker than the pages inside. Dimitri set it down on the table to one side before taking his seat. Dedue teased out what he wanted to say, tongue on the roof of his mouth, checking if his meaning was right, and avoiding words he simply didn’t know in Fodalni.

“...Still. Please know I do not mind,” Dedue insisted, when the words had found themselves.They were not the right ones, they were not  _ Please, let me be useful. Let me thank you.  _ There was nothing more to be said about it – the book was here. Instead, Dedue considered the task at hand with anticipation. For one, there was a lot he didn’t know – didn’t even know how to begin understanding – about his new circumstances. Duscur didn’t even have the word for a prince – while every town had at least a famous family, what Fodlan might call nobles, you either were an Alderman as the senior member of one of those families, or you were not – and the foreign title lacked the functional clarity of “King.” All he’d known of princes before this point were foreign children’s stories from travelling entertainers. Placing Dimitri in that role worked perfectly at first blush. In the capital of a foreign land, that simple, romantic hero was… not enough, to explain the place of someone waiting to be king. Or what Dedue could do to do right by him.

For another, how long had it been since he’d really had a task at hand besides trying to patch his clothes? (He wasn’t going to lose that shirt. He could push everything down, lock it in a box until it stopped hurting, but he was not going to make what he’d been wearing that day into scraps. Making new shirts to keep up with him had gotten impractical, even if he’d always been large, and he was grateful for that: it let him have his father’s shirt, even now.) His efforts to make Dimitri some token of gratitude had stalled – no materials and little tools. So having something to do besides bury a past that was dead now or fret for a future that he hung onto with fingertips? He hungered for it.

“I’m ready.”

“Ah! Right, then.” Dimitri’s hands hovered over one of the pens, brushing up against its grey and white vanes so the tufts of feathers broke and clung to one another, before resting on a metal grip that reinforced it near the nib. Dimitri froze thoughtfully.

There was a long silence.

“Ah, right?” A cautious prompt.

“Yes.. I’m sorry...I have no idea how to begin this, if I’m being candid.” Dimitri’s voice tensed, letting words escape uneasily. “It’s not something I’ve thought about explaining.”

“If you do not know, then how would I?” The two of them looked at each other for a long moment before Dimitri looking a little worried. A shame; that had been some small attempt at humor. “I am not sure if it is important where you start. If you say something I don’t understand, I will ask.”

“Of course. Let’s begin, then.” Dimitri picked up one of the quills carefully, his fingers barely touching it – as if a feather could only be touched by a feather. Once he’d gotten his grip, though, his hand relaxed enough to hold it merely loosely. Into the ink went the nib. The quill’s tip scratched across a larger scrap of paper, drawing (writing) a series of isolated fragments. The ink bled slightly into the worn-out paper, but they were clear enough. “Fodlan’s script is made up of 26 letters, each of which… sort of represents a sound, I suppose.”

“Sort of?” He’d learnt solid Fodlani in the past – it was common enough, closely related enough to Duscurian, and he’d been considering the family tradition of spending some time in Faerghus as a journeyman, if the situation had allowed. The result was just enough to converse at a level only somewhat lower than his normal. It had not adequately prepared him for phrases like ‘sort of.’ 

“Well, can be multiple sounds, depending on the word, and some stand for different sounds when they’re paired with other letters.” He sighed. “I’m not a scholar, so I don’t understand the reasons precisely... I suppose we’ll start with one sound a letter, and branch out,” Dimitri sounded unsure. “If that’s fine to you.”

It was. With Dedue’s nod, the drills began, with Dimitri reciting a name and sound for each letter he’d written out. When the list was done, then Dedue would repeat them back – and that was where they ran into struggles. When Dimitri was saying them, Dedue was sure he was committing them to memory – but when the time came to repeat, he’d slip after the first few. This had happened a few times, not getting much further consistently than D, before they both came to a pause.

Dimitri made a huffy little grunt as he brought his hand to his chin. The library’s windows had the full blast of the late afternoon sun bursting through them, bathing their table in a perfect gold streak.

“There must be an easier way to do this…” Dimitri grumbled, eyes narrowed down at the page. Dedue hung his head sheepishly. Frustration was a low growl in the back of his head – but there was worse. To be so stalled right away… Embarrassing. He’d had one thing he’d needed to do, after all this time. But Dimitri continued on, “I suppose I’m not a very good teacher. I wish I remembered how I learned better.”

Dedue’s head lifted. Regardless of how Dimitri had learned this, there was how Dedue learned things. Recipes that were just recited to him weren’t as real as the hours he’d spent chopping vegetables, refining technique, the fall of spice into his hand for inspection stuck more than his mother’s declaration of its name and quantity. (The memories came at him like a cold snap, a sudden shock to the heart that bore familiar scents. There was no sense remembering that now!)

“...Maybe if I made the shape of the letter, I would remember it more easily.” He reached for one of the quills. It would be practice for writing them out as well, and an easy way to prevent distraction.

“That certainly makes sense; it’ll let us spend more time on each, and it’s better to study while you move, isn’t it?” Dimitri brightened, and Dedue smiled just a fraction in relief that his thoughts were matched. Dedue’s grip on the pen made it wobble as he traced an inkless line over the A to test it. Dimitri reached out with his one good hand for Dedue’s. He paused just over Dedue’s skin. 

“May I make a small correction and show you? I understand if you don’t want me to.”

“I would like that. I’m... sorry for the trouble,” Dedue said, surrendering his right hand to Dimitri’s efforts.

Dedue’s hands were rough things, calloused from working the bellows, used to carrying metal or casts to and from the forge. From working this end to that of the house and garden, knives and shears and shovels, dirt and vegetables, from when he was very young. They liked usefulness, could move peacefully and fluidly from one task to another, were surprisingly deft at things like engraving metal – a shame the Molinaros were not goldsmiths, people said when they saw the earring he’d made to mark the start of his journey into adulthood. Dedue couldn’t remember his hands ever being small or soft things, even if, surely, they must have been smaller, must have been softer, once upon a time. They’d grown with him, ahead of him, waiting for him to catch up. He wondered if he had – if the world demanded hardness for hardness, his loss made calluses for calluses. They were iron, and he needed the iron in him.

But Dimitri’s fingertips, surprisingly tough, touched his hand as if it was made of fine gold filigree. It almost tickled like a breath over the back of his palm and fingers. Dedue handled flowers like this, wafting, soft-petaled beauties. Nothing could be further from his hands, and that indescribable gap caught his breath inside him – flimsy, delicate. Dedue tore his eyes from that touch to try and see the face to accompany it, what sort of mockery or what sort of smile could go with it. But he found his gaze unanswered, and Dimitri’s face very serious and thoughtfully caught on their fingers.

It was only after a moment that Dimitri’s touch on his hand became a hold. Dimitri pressed his fingers into the sides until Dedue’s flesh yielded – then he stopped adjusting his grip and guided Dedue’s fingers around the pen.

Dimitri looked up to see Dedue staring at him, and he almost immediately let go as if Dedue’s hand were a hot coal.

“Oh, that was too much, wasn’t it?” If Dedue’s face was flushed, his skin masked the change in color if someone wasn’t used to it. Dimitri’s was transparently turning pink – and, Dedue suspected, for far less puzzling reasons. “I’m sorry.”

“Too much?” Dedue blinked. He had no idea what Dimitri was talking about now – they’d been too close, maybe? “It was not. I was only...surprised.”

That made sense, anyway. Surprised enough that he was not quite done being surprised when Dimitri took his hand again, with the hold he’d had before he let go.

“So, then, this isn’t too rough? Please be sure to tell me if I make a mistake.” It was not a mistake, though, so Dimitri directed Dedue’s hand to trace over the strokes of the A, gliding up its incline and down, dashing back over its middle. And while hand moved over hand and letter formed over letter, they worked over the sound, one at a time, a strange harmony stirring the library’s air as the dimming light slipped off of the table once more. 

And then the library door opened, and Dimitri slowly let go of Dedue’s hand for real this time.

“Your Highness, it’s time to prepare for dinner,” said the maid who stepped into the room, her words dipping with her body into a curtsey.

“Oh! I’m sorry, the time escaped us. We’ll be just a moment; we have to put some things away,” answered Dimitri with a polite nod as he rose up. Dedue picked up and stowed away the paper they’d been working with for review. While Dimitri worked on picking up pens and the rest of the scrap paper in one swoop, Dedue hurriedly grabbed the book to avoid a repeat of their previous conversation. Dimitri stopped when he noticed and pursed his lips. Eventually, he simply said, “Let me show you where that goes.” 

The two of them moved into the dusky shadows. The firelight seemed brighter than it had before, but it was only in little slivers between the tall shelves. 

“You did good work today, but I suppose picking out a book was a little over-ambitious of me,” Dimitri commented, with a tone that strained to sound amused rather than regretful. It was a strain, Dedue thought, that might call for a response.

“Perhaps.” That seemed a little insufficient. In that waiting silence, he felt strange and out of place; the flipside to that anticipation from before. Even if they’d made progress, Dedue couldn’t help but feel a long way away. “What is the book about?”

“It’s a book of fables; I thought it wasn’t very hard, since it’s for children, and might be good practice…” Dimitri paused. His hair shifted over part of his face, catching some last golden bit of light and blazing, as he tilted his head to one side. “My father used to read it to me. Not often, exactly.” he was hurrying through his words a little, trying to disguise the little cracks and shifts just by saying more. “But when he could find the time. There were stories of animals, and of knights... I saw my father in its heroes, and the sort of man I wished to be. It was so comforting.“

Part of Dedue, a part he could not like, wished Dimitri would stop speaking of his father. Just  _ stop _ . The accusation of regicide brushed against him like spines; the reminder of his own father twisted something in his heart; the inability to just focus on where his next footstep would land was a nightmare. But Dimitri just went on, speaking through a gritted smile that another, lonely part of Dedue wished he could do something for. 

“But I need strength now, nothing else. I suppose I shouldn’t hold onto nostalgia or sentiment like that.”

_ Yes,  _ Dedue thought.  _ It’s much easier for you if you do not. _ When Dimitri motioned to a shelf, Dedue went and slide the book up towards it. It was only then he noticed its front cover. It had been coated in layers of a protective clear gloss that now, with time, was beginning to grow just a little dingy. And so what had once been a bright spring green faded to summer’s beleaguered shades, so the armor on its knights was tinged with black, and so too the white horse had been stained faintly cream – no longer quite the white horse of the prince. 

So Dimitri had heard that sort of story, too. Of course he had; after all, where else would the travellers have gotten them, but lands like Faerghus? But when that thought hit him, that wasn’t what he meant. It felt like a thread, between his past and his future. Stories like these echoed the heroes of his hero, who saw it with such a wounded set of eyes as it slotted back into its place amid rows and rows of books. Above any objections he might ever have, a wave rose up in him, a heartsore feeling that lifted its way into his throat. He didn’t really want Dimitri to put something like that away, to separate himself from the prince that had reached his hand, his heart, his battered and gashed body through the abyss. He couldn’t look away from that person.

“Please, don’t let go. I think it sounds very nice.” Dedue patted its spine, ensuring its safety there with the other books. “I’d like to try to read this book, someday.” Dimitri’s smile lost its rueful edge, relaxed into something more like a real expression.

“We’ll have to keep working hard for that to happen soon,” Dimitri’s voice had none of the doubt that perhaps ought to have been there. Dedue nodded as they turned to leave the library, making plans for their return as they exited. They were solid, tangible, and Dedue thought they, too, were worth holding onto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Is it gay or feudalism, gay or feudalism, gay or feudal-- oh, wait. Neither of those words start with C, so I guess C is for Commendation.


	3. C is for Commendation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While some might not find this worth warning over, I thought better safe than sorry and wanted to say that this chapter features some approximately canon-style racism. There's no perfect way to skip it, but an audience member wanting to skip for now regardless would do well to read the first few paragraphs and ctrl+F to "He did the only thing he could."

Dedue tried to stand tall under the low-burning heat of gazes seen and unseen. On the other side of the doors to the throne room waited Dimitri, prepared to hear Dedue’s words and accept his loyalty. In front of a medley of rich Faerghus witnesses. He could hear their murmurs through the door, moving like a wind through trees. 

It was important that this be seen and understood; otherwise, it was no different than the promise Dedue had already made inside his heart in the very moment Dimitri had reached out his hand. Even if no one heard it, that promise was what mattered to him. But words unspoken couldn’t mean he was accepted at the side of the Prince of Faerghus. For that, they needed something everyone could see – In Faerghus, such oaths had weight. Maybe even enough to silence the whispers of the knights who were watching him, aligned in one column before each side of the door.

“This is going to be a mess,” whispered a knifelike knight, whose steel blue hair matched his armor so perfectly that, to Dedue’s eye, it looked as if the armor’s material had been chosen for it – beautifully-made armor with no traces of hammered-out dents or scuffing. He continued at a clear voice, ”A Duscur hayseed couldn’t possibly understand courtesy. Look at him.”

Dedue couldn’t help but turn down his gaze, turn inward, swallow a breath gone cold and still in him. The longer he looked around, the more he might agree. The day didn’t call for armor – but he couldn’t afford it or make it if it did. He came in a borrowed white tunic, in borrowed pants, to stand bare-headed in a place that gleamed with gilt and bristled with spears. The knights had seen a million ceremonies like this one – the only novelty here was this awkward peasant from a town between the forests and plains of Duscur. From a ruin, now.

“You’re thinking about it too practically, Carston. There’s no such thing as too poor for a commendation, really; what matters is the oath well-made, and the service faithful,” commented a fair-haired knight in a reasonable tone. This provoked a forlorn sigh from the only member of the column Dedue had seen before today – Gustave, an older knight who Dimitri seemed to trust a great deal. Amid the glitter, that knight seemed shabby, tired, old. But the younger men around him hardly noticed. “You have to remember what they say about His Highness the prince: he’s got a strong sense of compassion. I think it’s admirable, a lord who can have pity.” 

The knight’s last words were very much the truth. Perhaps they all were. If he could manage an oath well-made, it would be enough. He needed only repeat it and hold it inside himself. He kept his eye contact only with the stone floors underfoot, worn hazy grey-white and soft-edged by time and ages of footsteps. But the rabbit of his heart was running faster and faster. He could do nothing about his background, his station. He could do little for his appearance he hadn’t already – hair pulled back in a tidy knot, clothes and skin clean. He was scary-looking and tall, even for someone from Duscur. He didn’t know if that was for or against him, as a fighting man. And he could at least fill the role he wished for; he had no doubt of his faith. 

_ "I promise on the goddess that I will in the future be faithful to my lord, never cause him harm, and will observe my homage to him completely, against all persons, loyally and without deceit." _

They’d laid out those words until late the night before. There were words Dedue had learned just to say that phrase in Fodlani. An oath to Fodlan’s goddess wasn’t special to him, but it wasn’t  _ for _ her. It only needed to reach the people in that room without embarrassing anyone. He’d hold out his hands, and Dimitri would accept them in his (they’d needed to wait until his left arm was healed enough to be used lightly for this) – and then things would be settled. The words, mincing shadows when cast against the truth, sank down his throat.

“So you’re not worried about what having a vassal like that will do for his image, Henri? Or ours?” Asked Carston, more low now. Almost actually attempting to whisper.

“What concerns us is our own liege, not his nephew,” replied Henri. “There’s hardly anyone left from the king’s own service for His Highness, the poor prince – it’s not surprising that it can’t get filled with the sort of quality it had before.”

_ Patience _ . He tried to think it over their words. His hands tensed into each other, digging in their nails. Those hands had to be good enough. He only needed to be calm.

“And whose fault is that?” Asked a third knight grimly. Older than the first two, but not old, a sharp white scar eating up one cheek. 

“They’ll pay,” came a voice Dedue couldn’t place, low and slow and thoughtful. “I wish we could join the marshaling at the border.”

What had happened that day. It was still not over. It was building, catching its breath, becoming a war built on massacres.  _ Patience _ , thought Dedue above the sound of flames that met his falling heart. Over the sound of steel that still was not silenced. He got so little news, and yet, each piece was a beast to tear his heart.

“I hope by the time His Lordship allows us to go, they’re not already totally crushed.” Carston lifted a hand to his sharp, jutting chin. “I’d like some decoration if it’s war, at least… But I can’t imagine there’d be a worthy fight to be had from hicks, so is there really a point?”

“Of course there is. His Late Majesty’s blood is still on their hands. Even if we never served His Majesty, we’re knights of Faerghus,” said Henri, almost gently. “We know our duty, even if we’ll never see reward or praise.” 

“Then how can you look at what His Highness is doing and not feel ashamed?” Carston shook his head. “A peasant alone would be a poor – ahaha – enough choice… Has he gone mad?”

While that sickening laugh crept into Dedue’s bones, the voice that had sighed stirred from the front of the column at last. 

“Do not insult His Highness,” Gustave’s voice sounded so tired that whatever his real age was might have been doubled. He was still sturdy-looking, still in fine shape, still carrot red in all his braided hair. His armor had seen more than its share of battles, though, and the places where the hammer or solder had been applied to help ease its scars were clear. The marks of age on him weren’t vast – but they were overwhelming. His lined face felt like it had been not so much worn into him as cut. His posture had something weakened running through it, a weariness that kept him from fully lifting his head. His eyes, which were in color bright, seemed dull and listless as a dead fish. 

Dimitri had trusted this Gustave with making sure Dedue had what he needed and was not forced to leave. Gustave had answered that without comment or complaint. And now, he said what Dedue wanted to say, what Dedue could not say. But if he couldn’t say it,  _ what was the point? _

“Don’t be so arrogant. There is no knight alive in this kingdom who should hold up his head,” Gustave pronounced. “We have all failed His Majesty and His Highness.”

“And letting this pass by silently will help?” Carston’s voice actually lifted now above the not-truly-a-whisper.

“Have a little pity, Carston,” Henri actually whispered in reply.

“You speak of pity, Henri?” The scarred knight did not look at anyone when he spoke. “What about pity for the King? To turn around and accept claims of ‘loyalty’ from one of the scum who killed Lambert – to throw aside the honor of the royal family? To ruin his good name and good will that way?”

It fell like a veil over all the knights. Even the one who weren’t conversing, just listening. Even the ones in their own whispers. It was a punch to Dedue – his patience sank, dragged down into the depths by those words, into a feeling so black he could not even say what it really was. 

The doors creaked open before he knew it. They all fell silent as the antechamber was struck with light. At the far end of the hall was Faerghus’ empty throne, shrouded in blue so rich it might well have been black. The shadow framed Dimitri’s bright hair, his pale skin, the flash of white ermine on the edges of his cuffs and cape as he stood before it, until he shone like a beacon. The great hall yawned between them like a pit, an aisle on either side of which stood a few observers, perhaps 25 people in whole, not counting the tall man with red-gold hair slightly to Dimitri’s side, his uncle Rufus. The knights fanned out to flank both sides in slow motion. The heads of the Faerghus courtiers, clad in deep colors and brocade, lined in felt and fur, poised and polished, all turned, their chuckles silenced.

Dedue came to a stop before he crossed the threshold. He stared into the crowd as his heart, his breath, his nerve all sank to the bottom of the world. Their gazes were knives sharpening themselves on his skin, his clothes, his face – burning cold, identical no matter whose face it was. Butchered by them, he understood – everything the knights had said was written on these faces as they watched this Duscur hayseed, scum and regicide, who’d demand their prince throw away his honor out of pity. Nothing could ever change this.

And Dedue couldn’t find what he was supposed to say. He couldn’t find anything but a suffocating ash in his core; ache and flames and the clang of steel blotted out anything else in the world.

He did the only thing he could do for either of them: he turned and ran, footsteps resounding. Even Dimitri’s sad voice at his back was swallowed by the sounds of an inferno in him. That plea couldn’t fix things; somewhere along the line, he’d been tricked into believing it could. What had he been thinking?

There was nothing that could wipe away the differences in his blood.

He tore through a blurring maze of grey stone, pushing himself through doorways until he broke from the stifling warm air, hitting the wall of bright, cool spring beyond. 

There was nothing that could make him anything but an uneducated peasant.

He kept going, but there was no running from his own failure; he knew he couldn’t run and run and become someone who hadn’t just run away.

There was nothing that could make him not too foreign, too poor, too pitiful, to do anything but shame someone so precious.

He was out of air to run with, so when he hit true silence, he came to a stop in some corner below the walls. The garden here was old, gone wild where no one had noticed, hidden between layers and gaps in the castle walls and old buildings. His legs dropped out from beneath him there amid wilting white roses and the rustle of tall grasses.

There was nothing he could do to make the life he was given worth something, after all.

Whatever dam stood between his heart and the world crumbled with the rest of him. Now he cried; not quickly or loudly, but in quiet, rolling tears where his breath was slowed almost to the point of being held; it came out with a tremor he felt rather than heard. He curled in on himself, cursing himself in every breath.

Time could have stopped until another figure entered the garden through its only open entrance, a gap in the walls. Dimitri picked his way closer to Dedue’s figure slowly, brushing aside a vine of overgrown roses, already ready to lose petals. A pure and simple sorrow overcame the worry on his face as he lowered himself to the grass by Dedue. His cape surrounded him in a puddle of cool purple that he tugged about him as he thought about what to say.

“I’m sorry, Dedue. I’m so very, very sorry.” Dedue didn’t know how to respond to that. He should be the one apologizing, but he couldn’t begin to say it. “I should have thought more about how you’d feel.”

“No.” At last, he’d gotten a grip on his tongue. “I am sorry. I...ran away from my promise. I embarrassed you.” He didn’t look to his side to see Dimitri or reveal his own tear-stained face. He simply couldn’t, even if the breathlessness in his voice gave it all away.

“I was far too thoughtless.” Dimitri twitched his cape aside to pick at the grass between them, taking up a handful. The blades flitted down under fidgeting fingers. He sighed. 

“I needed … to do better. I should not have been… frightened. That is my fault.” Dedue insisted, now lifting up his head. There wasn’t a lick of anger or disappointment on Dimitri’s face – only a softness that opened wider as he saw the paths tears had washed down Dedue’s face.

“Dedue…” a soft murmur moved the air. Dimitri turned himself wholly to face Dedue. Dimitri’s hand still could reach out and rest itself on Dedue’s slumped shoulder. “I’m not hurt; you are. So, please, tell me what happened.”

“It was nothing… Nothing happened.” Dedue looked away. He shouldn’t think there could be something like this touch, some bond between them – not when in its place there were the miles between Fhirdiad and Duscur stood between them, the soldiers preparing further reprisals, further blood, further fire. But his shoulder didn’t move to shift off Dimitri’s hand; its weight shifted the scales, threw Dedue’s judgement off its balance. 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that.” 

“...People spoke, that’s all.” Dedue shook his head, causing the faint clink of his earring to rise above his small voice. Dimitri leaned forward to grip Dedue’s gaze in a vise of vivid blue. “About my background. About Duscur, and… about you.” 

“What about your background?” Dimitri’s voice hinted at stormclouds as his posture locked stiff with indignation. 

“It was…nothing I did not know.” Dedue wasn’t lying – but he hadn’t entirely seen it that way before then, hadn’t been paying attention. He wrestled for a moment – to tell Dimitri what they had said of Dimitri’s pity, or not? Dimitri’s gaze did not release him; so, his words limped onward. “...But it made me think about… Everything. I was not able to be calm.”

“Everything...” Dimitri sounded thoughtful, but didn’t wait for an answer; he knew it. All the better – Dedue didn’t want to have to explain it. Everything was everything that had happened. Everything was that day, and all the ways it still lingered. The way no one would let it end. “I admire how calm you are about it, really. I, well, I’m not sure I have the strength.”

“You do well. It is...an effort, sometimes.” He shook his head, sighing. “It wasn’t enough. I could not help you.” Those weren’t the right words, but he was tired of fighting for them. He wanted someone to understand what he meant. he missed his sister, who always understood, without even a word -- and when someone didn’t, she’d tell them.

He missed his sister.

“Dedue, I’m not bothered, not really. I’m OK.” Dimitri insisted, giving Dedue’s gripped shoulder a shake strong enough to move Dedue’s entire body with it. Dimitri smiled sheepishly and kept talking, “I do admire that you can be calm, but if anyone has the right to cry until his tears have dried, isn’t that you? It’s OK. You don’t have to be calm now.”

All the breath was gone from Dedue at once. 

In the next moment, the cool air nipped as his wet eyes. A tremor ran through him, released from some place locked in his heart. Dedue wanted to deny it after that silence, or to thank Dimitri for that – and couldn’t, not even for a moment, make an effort at it; all that came out was a faint noise too thin for his chest or throat, something that came from the top of his head or the back of his neck. Instead of words, he unfolded to reach over and grab Dimitri, pulled him over into his arms.The momentary brace of shock filtered out of Dimitri’s figure. So close there on the ground, Dedue could hear the little sound Dimitri made as he settled into the hug, and steadied his arms around Dedue’s back. The tears rolled without restraint down his face once more — but this time, they landed on Dimitri’s shoulder, where Dedue had buried his head. Like that, Dedue could catch himself – but he didn’t, not immediately. They sat in this hollow of walls and in the vast, clanging ache at the base of Dedue’s heart.

But he couldn’t push away the world forever. Couldn’t deny the truth forever, however nice it had been to simply be; he separated himself, bending grass and Garland Moon wildflowers to make a distance between them again. Dimitri didn’t fully withdraw – his eyes pleaded for something. Dedue kept going.

“I saw in their eyes… Under their looks, I knew how little I was. I couldn’t do anything. I cannot move in your world, Dimitri.”  
The wind filled the silence, blowing with the promise of sweet summer. The roses that climbed the walls around them trembled, sending petals tumbling down, dotting their shoulders with a perfumed rain. Dimitri’s posture fell down with them and with Dedue’s speech dropping onto him. He finally couldn’t look any more – his hands clutched at nothing from a resting place atop his knees.

“I don’t see you that way. No one should.” What people should or shouldn’t do didn’t matter – those were just kind words. But Dimitri pressed on. “Give me names, and I'll — I'll think of something to say to them." Dedue shook his head. Remembering their words, he doubted anything Dimitri could say would do anything but hurt his 'image.' It was more trouble than it was worth. Dimitri lowered his head, ashamed. "...I’m sorry for not thinking about how hard it would be, to have to be something for everyone as the center of attention, somewhere so different from your home.”

“It’s not their attention that stops me… Not only their attention,” Dedue corrected himself. “I have nothing. I know nothing of Faerghus’ honor. I couldn’t even keep my promise long enough to make it. I failed you.” There was no single word to end that sentence, though — he had failed Dimitri. He had failed everything he had in the world. He may well have failed whatever god had chosen him to be the one given his life that day. And harder to mention, because it felt so  _ selfish _ to say, “...I failed myself.”

Dimitri tilted his head while his thin face, drained white as the petals interspersed across his purple cape and golden hair, knotted with concern – and with thoughtfulness. To answer that silence, regardless of whether he could stay here, Dedue reached over and gently brushed some of the roses off of Dimitri’s shoulders. Dimitri followed Dedue’s hand with his eye, not refusing the gesture. But he waited for it to finish, and for the air to lull still when the wind died.

“...And if you had another chance, is that still something you want? To swear such an oath, I mean.” 

Dedue started, eyeing Dimitri, whose face was so earnest that Dedue couldn’t read what he wanted. He nodded. 

“But that doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does. I don’t think you’ve failed me! I don’t want you to feel you’ve failed yourself.”

“That does not change what happened.” Dedue didn’t see the point in such a thing. Even if it was nice,

“It changes what can happen!” Dimitri insisted hotly, before his tone softened, grew warm rather than burning. “I know I might be asking a lot, but if we thought of what you _ could _ do, and find ways to lighten or avoid the rest, and tried to walk forward little by little…” Dimitri righted his shoulders and spine, lifting his chin. But even if the rest of his face tried to hold itself proudly, his eyes were so soft then, soft and blue and open as the sky overhead. “No matter what anyone says, I think that’s enough. If you chose to offer me something… I would accept you.”

The prince reached out his hands, together but open. A space between them waited to hold Dedue’s hands. For a moment, Dedue didn’t understand; when he did, he still wasn’t sure that he was right. If this was right. There was a limit to what could happen – however disappointing, there were still things no one could change. Even knowing that, would this be alright? He carried the question in his eyes, his fingers curled and hesitating. He couldn’t remember what to say – no. Those simply weren’t the words he needed now. And he saw an answer, still carried in those outstretched hands. 

“I never want to hurt you,” Dedue advanced his words cautiously, almost a question. When Dimitri nodded slightly, something in him buoyed up on a gently rolling sea. “I never want to run like that again… But to always stand by you, to help you in any way I can. I wish to protect you faithfully, no matter what I must face.

“You saved more than my life.” The sorrow had melted out of his voice, and he met Dimitri’s gaze with resolve. If Dimitri said they could move forward – then no matter what he feared in his heart, he’d believe it. If he stopped, if he didn’t believe in the world Dimitri could show him, the world that still had mercy and kindness in it, even for him, then why had he come this far? If he wasn’t ready to stand by Dimitri now, he would keep trying until he became ready. If there was nothing to make him, he'd try for the rest of his life.

So he placed his hands into Dimitri’s — for a moment, those fingers which held him like a treasure could keep out the world. They seemed so small against his hands, but they were so warm. There was nowhere he would not go for them, and nothing in him they could not reach. 

“I swear, I will always believe in that.”

Dimitri blinked, his lips parted from slack shock. Before Dedue could wonder how much he’d overdone it, Dimitri smiled, face graced with a little pink flush.

“That was a splendid oath! Wonderful, even!” Dimitri answered in beaming tones. He chuckled, his hands shifting over Dedue’s as if deciding when to let go. “It caught me a little off-guard,hearing something like that… I’ll do my best to live up to it.” He sighed, realizing what he hadn’t said — but he did so with the truest of his smiles, small and bright as candle-flame. “Forgive me; what I mean to say is… I accept your homage as my vassal, Dedue.”

“Hm,” Dedue could only nod, with nothing to say he hadn’t already said, and too choked up to try. No one spoke for a small while.

“I suppose that’s ceremony enough,” said Dimitri when he finally began to slowly surrender Dedue’s hands. The moment ended, not abruptly or coldly, but the simple passing of one thing into the next; Dimitri casually leaned back, propping himself up on one arm. He rotated his left arm slowly, feeling out its range of motion.

“..Is that so?” Dedue wasn’t nearly so convinced, even if he did appreciate that. However nice this was, however peacefully affirming, it wasn’t any different than it had been. “There was a reason for the original plan, wasn’t there?”

“There was, and it’s one that we can’t just leave be yet. I just think nothing good can come of hurting someone, so we’ll have to find some other way.” Dimitri nodded and lowered his jaw into his free hand. “Who could I ask… Rodrigue, perhaps, if I wrote him? He may know some method of legitimacy that involves fewer witnesses. Perhaps we’d only need the right ones with his backing.”

Dedue mentally flipped through the people who’d come to see Dimitri after he’d returned to the capital. It was a small list, but most of them hadn’t considered Dedue long enough, or at all, for him to commit them to memory. Then again. which somber man Rodrigue was might not have mattered, if he could help them.

“I hope so.”

They settled into a companionable silence; Dimitri stretched – first his newly-freed arm, causing him to wince a little at the edges of its motion, then his other arm – but the injuries on his back must still have hurt as well, because he stopped entirely with a shadowed look that soon faded. Dedue let his familiar calm slip about him comfortably as he cleaned off his face and brushed aside a few rose petals from his clothes. And then they both stopped to truly look around the almost triangular garden they found themselves in. An outer wall, an inner wall, and a building’s windowless wall formed tangents around each other, creating a small space, only opened by a gap in the inner wall and a small doorway into the building, which was sealed over with a hardy-looking shrub. The grass had grown long towards the coming birth of Faerghus’ bright, clement summer, and it was dotted with buds of wildflowers and a few perennials gone to seed. Mostly, it was roses that had gone wild, climbing up all the walls. It was, for a ruin, such a peaceful little place.

“How did you ever manage to find such a place?” asked Dimitri, looking up to where the roses climbed and tangled. “I needed more luck than anything to find you.”

“I am not sure where we are. I moved until I was done, that is all.” He hadn’t been looking for a place, but seeing it now, he felt two parallel thoughts: the first, it needed tidying; The second, though, made him smile a little. “...It’s very peaceful here.”

“Yes, it truly is; it’s rare to find somewhere so private, but I guess this little place has been forgotten altogether.” Dimitri sighed contentedly, then shook his head. A wistful look filled his eyes. “It might be selfish, but it would be nice if it could always be so.” Dedue nodded in response.

“Then we should go, before someone comes to find you.” Dedue had to admit, he didn’t want this moment intruded by someone who’d only scorn him – or to lose a place like this as a refuge.

“I suppose so.” 

However, they lingered there for a while still, while the sunlight filtered down from over the garden wall. The air smelled sweet, and it carried no sound but a distant bird’s voice. It was still some time before they moved to rejoin the rest of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: A two-scener for a change, in D is for Dining.


	4. D is for Dining

Dedue grew used to the rhythm of his days. He woke up, got cleaned up and dressed, and went to greet Dimitri. The odds were about 50-50 as to whether or not Dimitri would be awake; Dedue had decided that he preferred the days when Dimitri was not awake when he arrived. The other half of the time, he had the distinct impression from the occasional restless sounds below and a peculiar fevered quality to Dimitri’s eyes that when he was awake early, it was because he’d given up on sleep at one point or another. The day would be a quiet one, where Dimitri seemed withdrawn and frustrated. If he slept in, however, he was normally somewhat apologetic at first, but spent the day in better spirits. If there was a difference in Dedue himself between the hard days and others, he wasn’t sure. He tried to keep himself on an even keel. People outside his family had always thought him stern, so perhaps the gap was unnoticable. Breakfast would be brought up, and these days, it would be intended for both of them. Dedue would eat, and Dimitri would have a few slow bites and then stare pensively at his food and declare himself satisfied. 

They would head to the library or Dimitri’s sitting room to study for a while. It was going not necessarily fast, but it did go well enough. Then, lunch would be brought. Dedue would eat and Dimitri would pick around things and push them across his plate. Then, one of the court’s physicians would treat what injuries lingered. At this phase, it was checking for signs of over-use on his arm, or applying medicine to his back and arms, where the damage had been worse, and the flesh was still trying to knit itself whole. They had no particular agenda for the afternoon otherwise; Besides trying and failing to speak to his uncle, Dimitri did not often have other company. Not never, of course, but not often. If that was normal or not, Dimitri did not say. Sometimes, on bad days, they would do nothing and say nothing. Dimitri would stare out the window or at the ceiling, and clutch his head like he was nursing a headache. He was fine, he would say. Dedue would worry, but sometimes he would simply detach and wait for something to stir him again. On better days, or once something had pulled Dimitri back up, he would show Dedue around, or he’d have been scolded and ordered to rest, or he’d head down to the stables. He had not been cleared to ride or to anything strenuous yet. Dedue was a little relieved. Sometimes, Dimitri tended to his own studies, while Dedue made alterations to the clothes that had been given to him – letting out seams and adjusting hems, mostly. Dimitri had flattered him absurdly the first time he saw Dedue at work. It was embarrassing, but if things like that were something Dimitri might need from him, then he would be glad to volunteer. 

Then, they would have dinner. Unlike the other meals, dinner was usually in the feast hall, rather than a meal they ate alone. It was not a comfortable meal in the slightest – Dedue had avoided it until Rodrigue’s letter returned with solid advice about how to shore things up with Dimitri’s uncle, including using the Fhirdiad’s bishop as a witness rather than noblemen — and for Dedue to eat at the same table, as Dimitri’s vassal and retainer. Once it became clear that no one would sit near Dedue, Dimitri had moved a few seats away from the table’s head to sit by him. It was more of a shock to Dedue than to anyone else for a change. People still talked, but it was better than having an awkward space at each side, and Dimitri had planted his foot about it. Perhaps due to the pressure of being observed from all sides, Dimitri actually ate some of dinner, but with an expression of such pure discomfort that it stunned Dedue that no one, not a soul, said anything about it.

Enough was enough. It was over lunch one day that the moment came. They were in Dimitri’s sitting room. With the summer upon Faerghus, the fireplace was still; the windows had been thrown open, light streamed in, and a breeze wafted the curtains. And Dimitri moved around a piece of squash with a fork, idly.

Dedue had not idea how to open this conversation. Originally, Dimitri had simply had trouble eating, the way he’d had trouble with many things – it brought that massacre back into his mind, and he got sick. Listening to him describe the feeling when pressed had made Dedue’s stomach turn, too. But Dimitri spoke normally now, and could get at least some sleep, and life, it had seemed he’d resolved, was going to go on. Except this. But how to ask?

“With food...Is it still the same?” Dedue settled on, breaking what had been a more comfortable silence. Dimitri jolted from his thoughts.

“No, of course not,” Dimitri answered stiffly. “I really do feel much better about that. I only…” He trailed off, his fork making a repetitive clink-clink on the surface of his plate. While he waited for Dimitri to continue, Dedue finished off his own lunch. 

“I’m very worried about how little you eat,” Dedue said, when no further comment was forthcoming.

“There’s nothing for you to worry about. You don’t know how much I eat normally, so you really can’t say it’s changed, you know,” Dimitri pointed out, quickly grabbing a bit of squash and shoving it in his mouth as if to display the vast sea of his personal well-being.

“If you have to say that, I can.” Dedue grunted and felt the sudden understanding of all the neighborhood aunts with opinions about how much food he should be eating, as if he were channelling their spirits. “You are not well. I’m right to worry.”

“There’s really nothing wrong, you know. It’s just a matter of patience, I’m sure. It would be hard to imagine things wouldn’t be strange, for a while.” Dedue had no idea if that obvious contradiction was supposed to be an attempt at humor, even if nothing in Dimitri’s face said so. Perhaps rather than try and make Dimitri explain that, it would be better to simply fix it. Things went silent while he came up with an approach – one that he was perhaps a little afraid of.

“Would something else suit you better? I could perhaps try to cook something for you.” He hadn’t tried to cook anything since back then. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like. But if it would help, he would do it. 

“You can cook, Dedue?” Dimitri’s fork clinked as he set it, and his previous train of thought, down entirely.

“I can.” Dedue thought this might work – Dimitri had perked up a little.

“That’s astounding.” Dimitri’s voice all but glowed, leaving Dedue a little flush under the unexpected praise. It was not as if it were not something to be proud of – perhaps more than any of his skills besides engraving, he was proud of it. It was his most important. 

“It is a small talent.” Most people – well, many adults, which was most people – he knew were far more experienced and practiced, and it clearly shown through. When he’d cooked on his own, on rare occasion, the result had been simply good. He wanted better, but he’d make do.

“I don’t know anyone my age who can cook, though. At least, I don’t think I could.” Dimitri shook his head. “I can follow directions well enough, but I’m no good at delicate work like that. So it really does seem impressive to me.” 

“So, will you let me?” Dedue prompted again. Dimitri looked quite serious as he considered the proposition. It clearly took some weighing, a trace of doubt flickering as a shadow across his face.

“Well, I suppose if it’s not too much trouble, I would rather like to see it,” he answered eventually.

Dedue simply nodded. At this point, he was wondering what exactly Dimitri was expecting of him now – and if he could deliver. But this was also his first real duty as Dimitri’s vassal, unless simply following him around counted (which it could, he supposed). So he must succeed. 

“Will you be making something from Duscur, then?” Dimitri’s question broke into Dedue’s thoughts, a question with an answer so obvious it didn’t need to be asked, really, if what Dedue really intended was to provide variety. But Dedue didn’t immediately answer – Something in him had ground to a halt, adrift inside him around a single thought: He wasn’t ready to make his mother’s food without her. He thought he might look for her in everything, and she’d be gone. The very thought pierced him, and he feared how the pain would be when the moment came.

“It is… hard to say. I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to try something you know,” Dedue answered, taking some care with how he said it. It wasn’t a lie. If whatever he made wasn’t something Dimitri would eat, then there was no point hurting himself for that. “I don’t know anything else, so that would be difficult.”

“I don’t think it really matters to me, but if you’re interested in trying something new, we could look and see if the library has any recipe books.”

Time stood still while Dedue contemplated the idea presented to him. He hadn’t even thought about it – if he even guessed the right meaning – but he supposed it was reasonable. And quite pleasant. Dimitri must have read something different into his silence, though, because he went onward, rambling just a little,

“Reading them might be a little hard right now, but I’d of course be happy to help you cover any gaps.”

“Then let us look.” 

* * *

It had been, from Dimitri’s perspective, gratifying to see Dedue as he’d contemplated the small number household manuals stored in the library. Rather than excitement, it felt like a sort of peaceful unwinding, even if their exact contents were beyond anything their lessons had gotten to yet. With little other use for them in the castle at the moment, they had all ended up on Dedue’s shelves. Which marked the whole venture as a victory, of a sorts. Dimitri read out the names of recipes until Dedue made a selection of a seafood soup he thought sounded nice.

“I’d like to make something that will impress.”

“Are soups impressive?” Dimitri had asked. He wondered if he could be impressed, the way things were right now. For Dedue’s sake, he was pretending that this would work, that food made by someone else would fix things.

But fix what, exactly? People kept saying that time would pass, and he’d go back to acting like his old self. If it truly was just an inevitability, then as long as he lived for their sakes, it didn’t matter whether he tried to do unpleasant things normally or not. He couldn’t even tell anyone what the problem was. He couldn’t name it himself. There was just a  _ wrongness _ to everything he ate, to trying to eat, to sitting in that dining hall with its tables filling up with people he didn’t know, more and more every day, sitting in their noise. How could he be so selfish? No one else would get to have time pass for them. The dead couldn’t return to their old selves. 

“If they are good. A soup is someone’s soul as a cook,” Dedue had answered, in tones that suggested this an absolute wisdom. “It is also true of eggs.” 

The second matter, then, was to secure use of some fraction of the kitchen – which had ended up being more trouble than Dimitri had expected, going through several layers of chef, even the new head chef, with requests, protests, and, as the whole business went on and the morning whittled itself down, the occasional glare or statement of position as Dimitri’s temper frayed. Someone had even implied they were worried about poison!  _ Poison. _

“I’m really very sorry,” Dimitri said, not for the first time, as he positioned a stool a bit closer to the flames. Eventually, they had managed to secure a corner that wasn’t preparing for other people’s’ lunches. It had roughly all the things they needed. An oven with a burner over the flames, a blank line of countertop, pots, pans, knives.

“...It’s not important,” came the reply from the larder. He mumbled something indistinct, likely checking the list. “...Does it change if it’s two Gs?”

“No, they just get read together as a single G. Do you need help?” Dimitri rose up to his feet. Dedue had gone in with the book by himself to find ingredients, but it was taking him some time. In summer, the castle’s larder could be called truly well-stocked. They kept ice down there year-round, and so preservation was easier compared to other places. Dedue didn’t immediately answer. Dimitri made the executive decision that it was, in fact, necessary, and followed after him, into the cool and dimly-lit chamber. The upper areas of fresher stock were only a little bit cool, removed from the heat of the kitchen, and he stepped into it with a faint but not unsatisfying tremor of cool. Dedue was standing not far in, his brow crunched up as he stared fixedly at the page, his lips moving silently. He had with him a basket that had a few of the ingredients in it – the eggs, for one. 

“Which are you looking for now?” Dimitri asked, peering around his back to get a look. Dedue ultimately passed the book down, pointing at the page.

“I cannot say if I am getting it wrong, or if I simply don’t know the word. It’s this one,” he said, pointing at the page. “Kee-lee-ryuh does not sound right.”

“Ah, it’s calling for two stalks of celery.”

“...Celery,” Dedue intoned, glaring at the page. He sighed in something like disgust at the betrayal of the written word. “You did say it would not always make sense.”

“I’m very sorry,” Dimitri was trying to sound earnest – and he was, he really was – but there was just a touch of a laugh in it at the tone Dedue had. Dedue let out what might have been his own little hmmph, his shoulders softening. Dimitri kept on, smiling if only for that. “Sorry, sorry. It’s a plant with a thick green stem and a white...root, I suppose? It’s rather crunchy and stringy. Do you know what I mean?”

“The names are not alike, but I believe I saw some.” Dedue refocused and doubled back to find some amid the shelves. 

“What is it called in Duscur, then? I know a little, but I hardly think enough.” Dimitri asked to his retreating back. Dedue gave the answer over his shoulder as he reached for the offensively-named plant.

The recipe contained a few other spellings that were a bit hard on Dedue – ones that taught him a few Duscur words in response, names of this or that vegetable – but nothing as outside of what they’d gotten to than ‘celery.’ And so, returning to the kitchen with their basket prepared, Dimitri was satisfied with that little test of their work. 

“You really have been working hard,” he was saying as he stood by the counter. While he’d gotten the stool, if he wasn’t feeling unsteady yet, he didn’t want to waste that feeling. He would remain standing until it no longer seemed like he could. Dedue weighed his responses for a while as he laid each thing out in turn, spreading them out with a systematic precision. 

“I’m not satisfied yet,” Dedue answered.He rolled up his sleeves, revealing a few small blotches where his burns had healed, and turned his attention to an onion.

“Even though I’d say that’s unfair to you, I wouldn’t be, either. It’s certainly progress, though, and you must not forget that.” 

“...Very well.” Dedue looked down intently at the onion, in a way that almost hid a slightly tense but warm expression until it could settle back into something usually stern. “The onion. Do I chop it?”

“It says to quarter it, but leave it unpeeled.”

“Understood.” Dedue’s knife moved quickly and faultlessly. It was set aside after that. The soup was a seafood soup, and they had managed to procure a fish – which now saw Dedue filleting and deboning it. This was probably the only part of cooking, besides ‘apply heat,’ that Dimitri knew decently well – he could skin and butcher an animal, even if it was normally something caught by hunting, not fishing. Though he wasn’t sure he could have handled those tiny little bones that Dedue cut from the fish with a tiny knife and added to the pot, along with a few leftover bones he’d asked after, to make a stock. While he occasionally asked Dimitri for an instruction from the book, mostly, he worked in silence and let Dimitri watch. He felt a little awkward, but… he didn’t want to interrupt right away. 

Because as he cooked, something in Dedue’s stance changed. Dimitri had caught glimpses of it before, just in the corners of his eyes. Dedue normally held himself as if he were strung through with wire hooked to the back of his neck. It wasn’t strange or shocking, but it was a fact. As he prepared the stock and began peeling and slicing potatoes while it simmered, that tension was slowly reduced down to nothing. In his big hands, both the potato and the knife looked somehow unreal, but they moved smoothly, without a trace of doubt or clumsiness. His shoulders softened, his elbows loosened from his sides. The firelight painted his hair in shifting golds, reds, flashes of snowfall silver where the color didn’t reach; the whole moment felt swaddled in a featherdown warmth. 

Dimitri, who’d tilted his head and sighed dreamily, spotted something else, too. It didn’t last long, but as Dedue turned to stir, the steam with its scent of seafood and bay leaves rising up to meet him, his face went slack with something Dimitri couldn’t name – Dedue blinked, his mouth forming a single, soft ‘oh’ of wonder.

_ Dare I ask? _ Dimitri wondered. But it felt so much like a soap bubble, this something. He’d only destroy it if he intruded. Dedue sighed, stirring the steam with his breath, in relief of something private. His brows smoothed out his face, his mouth lifted gently as a leaf on a breeze, and what was left in his eyes as his face melted into that smile was so tender. Dedue could often look so — so guarded that Dimitri sometimes forgot they were almost the same age. Seeing him like this, though, Dimitri was glad he could put that away, even if no one else knew. And then his face re-set itself, and that moment was gone for now. Dedue turned his head to face him and stopped.

“Dimitri?” Dedue asked, lifting a single eyebrow. Dimitri tried to guess what expression could possibly be on his own face – that it was a smile beyond perfectly passable, a real smile, didn’t even occur to him, and he hurried to place it back to something more normal for him. He snapped back into standing appropriately straight, as well. “I … apologize if this is boring to you.”

“Oh, no, not at all. I was having fun watching you,” he answered, and found it...surprisingly true. Dedue looked surprised to hear that. “It’s true – well, I suppose it’s not the most thrilling sort of fun, but I enjoyed it.”

“I see. Then I will continue.” And Dedue turned back to his work with some satisfaction. Continuing seemed to amount to a lot of waiting, now. The pot had been removed from the flames, which were being allowed to sink a little.The tall boy wiped some sweat off his forehead with the back of his forearm and frowned.

“...You do not need to stand there the whole time. This will take some time before I can move on,” Dedue told him. 

“I’d like to remain on my feet while I can. I won’t recover any strength if I don’t even try to push myself. This isn’t even that!” Although Dimitri said that earnestly, Dedue looked doubtful. Dimitri patted the nearby stool, brought for such a purpose. “I know I can sit when I need to.”

“Very well,” Dedue said, looking as if he were not entirely sure. “But be sure not to go too far.”

Eventually, he sieved out the solids from the stock, and stoked the flames once more, until they jumped upwards to lick the bottom of the pot. When it boiled, he added in the potatoes and gave it all a stir. Every now and again, Dimitri would see that same wonderful, in every sense of the word, expression again, until he had to ask,

“Dedue, is something on  _ your _ mind?”

And Dedue paused, hesitating. He folded his arms behind his back, brow furrowed.

“I am not sure I can explain. Perhaps…” Dedue looked up, where a ceiling of high wooden rafters holding up the stone vaulted overhead. His voice was wistful and far-away. “I thought I would not feel this way.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Was he wrong about that peaceful impression? Had he actually, in agreeing to this, done something terrible? Dimitri’s heart didn’t know what to do with itself, only stinging until Dedue gave a simple, quiet answer.

“No, not at all… I am happy to be doing this.” It was delivered to Dimitri – but perhaps not wholly to Dimitri. Its tone could have carried it somewhere far away. Not the way a shout was carried, but the slow drift of a cloud. Perhaps that drifting was simply the advance of time, a clock which had begun to tick just a tiny bit forward – for someone, anyway. 

“Is that so?” Dimitri got a nod in response. “That’s wonderful, then.” 

The process of turning stock into stew had mostly already been prepared, so it went underway quietly. Every now and again, as ingredients were added and cooked, Dedue would taste what he’d been working on, giving it a serious examination. In truth, compared to the actual cooking, Dimitri felt a little apprehension about it drawing closer and closer to being done. It smelled delicious – enough to wake up his stomach, which didn’t always happen on cue these days. Maybe he even had some real hope for it – he wasn’t sure. By now, the lunch rush in the kitchens had died down – what had seemed a quiet bubble was now and truly deserted as Dedue ladled out the soup into a pair of bowls. Dimitri took his seat at a table usually intended for working cooks, and Dedue followed. The tall boy was now almost radiating tension, his eyes wide and perhaps just a little more anxious than Dimitri was used to seeing. The bowl was set down in front of Dimitri. White fish bobbed amid a rich golden broth, potatoes and green vegetables gleaming through layers of steam. 

“It is quite hot, so be careful,” Dedue insisted. He did not yet take up his own bowl, only hovered. “How is it?”

Dimitri took his cue to try some, catching some of the fish in his spoon. The fragrant scent, tinged faintly fennel and bay, lingered in the air. And as it reached his mouth, he understood. He understood everything.

The thing that had been missing, the wrongness that had sunken in: the soup didn’t really taste like anything. Nothing he’d eaten in over a month had tasted like anything. It had a taste – it must have a taste, Dimitri could still smell it in his mouth. But if that taste was sweet, or salty, or savory; if it tasted more like the white wine that had gone into the fish stock, or the pepper he’d seen with his own eyes Dedue be somewhat more liberal than most Faerghus cooks with; if it tasted good or bad, even that basic fact… He couldn’t tell. And if he couldn’t tell with this, where there’d been such warmth and care in every facet, when he’d seen every last thing that had gone into it… What would he ever, ever again?  _ When would this be over? _

What Dimitri felt as an incredible weight in this moment was this: It would never be over. Some part of him had died, as he was meant to, and he could never get it back.

The world spun, turning more of his stomach than the tastelessness of the soup did. He was going to cry. Again. How pathetic, losing something so basic. What would anyone think of that? Of knowing he’d broken like that; he’d fallen to pieces so badly he’d lost a whole sense. He didn’t even know why, outside of  _ why _ . Where were they, the things in him that had died? Were they going to rot inside him, as wounds and bodies did? _ . _ He hadn’t been there long enough to see them rot, but he saw them decaying like the corpse of an animal left on the mountainside anyway. They would never taste anything again, either. Maybe it was fair.

But what would anyone think? Could someone who’d broken be a king who people could rely on, or would they just see him as — as ruined, useless, pathetic, weak? To have failed to truly survive. What would Dedue think?

Dedue had been watching his face, he realized. Patiently — he didn’t know, no one knew, no one needed to know. There was something he could do, because he was the one whose secret it was — he never needed to know what they’d think!

So he swallowed it down anyway, before Dedue could guess. The hot soup ran down his throat to a chest and stomach panging with heartache. There was something soothing about it, a column of warmth through him. It reminded him that he was hungry. His smiles had a tendency to be stiff, or so he was told when he practiced them, so perhaps this one would not seem especially wrong.

“It’s quite good,” Dimitri said, with at least the certainty in his heart that it was not a lie, unlike what he said next. “I like it.”

Dedue’s brows knit together as his eyes scanned, tested, judged Dimitri’s face. He sat down slowly, as if still waiting for a different response. To allay that worry, Dimitri had another spoonful. Nothing changed, of course. There was no hope, so he’d have to give up on waiting until the problem went away, on being sickened by what he’d found. That was that; he couldn’t afford to waste away and die – he would have to live with what remained.

Dimitri looked down into his bowl and considered what remained: the little lift of pride in Dedue’s chest, the memory of that softness that still lingered – it came as a surprise to them both, in different ways, to find that. And the effort Dedue had gone through simply to make him happy. 

“You know, if you wouldn’t mind, it would be nice to eat food you’ve prepared again in the future.” He didn’t know if it made him happy, or even if that had died, too – but if he thought of it in terms of what had been placed into it and who had made it, it really was the best meal he’d had in a month, and he could live on that. 

“Of course.” Dedue’s lips lifted very slightly at the edges. “Please eat it before it gets cold.”  
As spoonful followed spoonful, warmth followed warmth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: It would be impolite to not inform you now that E is for Etiquette.


	5. E is for Etiquette

“Eet…” No, it might be short. “Eti…” Dedue considered the messy back half of the word written on the spine of the book before him. It had just happened to catch his eye when he was replacing something they’d been looking at in the library this morning, and it was a thorny title. The first word was fairly incomprehensible, but sounding it out, it sounded more like a name than a word. The second… If it was a word he knew, it couldn’t be Guard, unless R sounds could just vanish when written out, so maybe Guide? Someone’s Guide to… He nodded at it seriously. He didn’t know the word. He quietly took the book and returned with it to where Dimitri was waiting. He placed it down on the table with a thud slightly louder than he’d been expected, causing Dimitri to almost jump out of his skin. 

“I am very sorry,” he said, and got waved off while Dimitri settled to look at the book. They’d been planning to head out, but Dimitri wasn’t in such a hurry that he didn’t have a glance to spare for it.

_ “Gwenolen’s Guide to the Etiquette of the Chivalric Court _ ? What made this catch your eye?” he asked, inspecting the book thoughtfully. His fingers made a little rainfall tapping against its spine.

“Its title was hard to read, so I grew curious.” Of course, the answer had nicely confirmed his guess. “Do you know what it is about?” Dimitri’s mouth pulled into a closed-up frown.

“Oh, it’s a famous manual of conduct for courtiers of all levels, sectioned by rank. Compared to other books like it, it’s not very much trying to pretend Faerghus is Adrestria, so it’s well-liked, I guess. I had to read a great deal of it in the past.” He looked at the book with his eyes tense; likely, that spoke to his feelings on it. He brought it back down to the table. “Chivalry are the ideals of a knight, and Chivalric, a term to refer to things supporting and supported by those ideals. Etiquette is the rules underlying polite conduct.”

“I thought the word for that was ‘manners,’” said Dedue, whose mother had clucked over the manners of her children until they were (mostly) undeniably well-behaved.

“Ah, well.” Dimitri rubbed his chin thoughtfully. His face was looking better — he was looking healthier on the whole — since Dedue had started cooking some meals for him. Dedue wasn’t satisfied with the response to his cooking when he saw Dimitri’s entire lack of enthusiasm for it outside of his words; still, Dimitri’s color was better, and he was finishing meals now, so the rest would be a matter of understanding and patience. But he couldn’t say Dimitri looked quite right — his hair often seemed completely unattended to, the long blond strands falling over each other and crossing over his face if Dimitri didn’t shake them out of the way, and his eyes were often, between their sleepless shadows and their long stares, worrying in a way Dedue knew he himself sometimes mirrored. Dedue didn’t want to wonder if it would ever be easier — to see, to be, both. He wanted to know. “Manners are the specific actions and words, while I suppose etiquette is more a matter of the theory, that is, the rules and reasons guiding manners?” Dimitri attempted, and then shook his head, causing his hair to fly all over. 

Dedue made a noncommittal noise as he ran his hands over the book. The rules and reasons for how people in Faerghus — people in Fhirdiad — people in this castle — were supposed to handle others. Perhaps, then, too, the sort of things that might be expected of them? Of him. 

“Would it be alright if I borrowed this someday?” He eventually asked, causing Dimitri to shrug.

“It’s not often used, though I imagine that with... so many new staff members, people might be using it in the near future in order to bring new servants to order and to be accustomed to the castle.” The way Dimitri had paused wasn’t something to overlook — but nor was it something Dedue knew how to press. Still, did the book cover even something like that? “But that’s not to say you couldn’t borrow it for your own study, of course. I think if no one comes looking for it, it shouldn’t be a problem to hold onto it for a while. And you can always borrow it multiple times.”

“Hmmm...Perhaps I will come back for it.” As he turned to return it to its place, Dimitri followed after. 

“I do, however, hope you know your conduct to this point has been fine. I’ve no complaints.”

Dedue wondered to what extent Dimitri meant it, and to what extent Dimitri only said such things because he was, Dedue had realized, very much dedicated to being  _ nice.  _ It was true Dedue had always striven to be polite, but that didn’t remotely mean he was faultless.

“Good,” he told Dimitri. It wasn’t untrue — he’d rather keep it that way than much else, even if Dedue was simply being treated nicely. “I still feel I need to understand better.”

* * *

There had been a time, the day before last, when he had certainly done  _ something _ wrong. It was possible it had even slipped Dimitri’s mind entirely; it had been a bad day, after a stormy night where Dimitri must not have been able to sleep, not when Dedue certainly hadn’t. That was what had started it to begin with. Dedue hadn’t been comfortable watching Dimitri pace about his rooms for much longer that day. No one should pace that quickly when they were so exhausted that he barely kept his eyes open, but his steps had been relentless. It was too much.

“Is there something you would like to do, Dimitri?” He’d asked, hoping to draw Dimitri back out, pull him away from the corners of himself.

“What? Oh, Dedue, I’m not...” Dimitri had blinked intently, and picked up his voice to put it back on solid footing. His face grew taut, mask-like. “I’m fine. I can’t think of anything. I mean, nothing comes to mind in particular. I’m perhaps just a little tired.” 

“Would you perhaps walk with me, then?” Perhaps it had been a lot to ask. Dimitri spent a long moment considering it, enough that Dedue found himself mimicking what Dimitri tended to say at times like these, “It is fine if you’d rather not.”

“It’s no trouble at all, I’d be happy to accompany you.” Dimitri side-eyed him at the common refrain, but that at least pulled something a little more natural, maybe even amused, out of his face. “Where did you intend us to go, then, Dedue?” 

“I have not seen much of the gardens. If we could, I would like that.” He’d taken a long pause to consider his options — he had not planned this far ahead. Dimitri gave a little nod, took a long series of slow, methodical breaths. 

‘’Yes, let’s go; it’d likely be nice this time of year, wouldn’t it? The weather seems to be quite nice, as well.” With an answer that sounded right without  _ sounding right  _ when Dimitri said it, they headed out. Dedue made a point of keeping his stride relatively short as to not leave Dimitri behind — a bit more of a conscious effort than normal. There was no hurry. 

Dimitri had been correct. The air was sweet and sun-warmed, smelling of wet earth — the night’s storm lingered as a scent and a buoyant freshness all around them as they stepped out of the main body of the castle, to a landing above lower gardens. Dedue sometimes had the sense of moving through a hollow shell, a castle of ghosts; so much in it was old, and places that looked as if they ought to have been busy, even recently busy, were starting to collect dust — but it didn’t seem that way on that day, when a great many of its residents went to enjoy this brief sunlight amid the rows of blooming lupines, set in concentric beds amid a kaleidoscope of dreamy, billowing poppies. The lines of sight were blocked by juniper bushes, spaced neatly across the beds. At the center of this garden, which branched off towards other ones or buildings along its sides, was an array of large stones, touched with deep green moss and shockingly-colored lichen; the mountains were here, in their way, with blue bellflowers cascading from their gaps and slopes. Even though there had been people taking their own strolls or an afternoon snack on a bench, the precious warmth had seemed more important to them than Dimitri and Dedue. 

He’d agreed with them on that. The sunlight had sunk into his bones; its weight draped around him like a blanket. Something squeezed his heart as he drifted down the stairs, approaching the rivers of blooms. He was alive. This had been true for over a month; he still couldn’t explain why in that moment it had struck him so strongly, so bright and so stinging, as he watched the poppies bob their colorful heads, petals satinesque, in the soaking light. Dedue sifted a sigh through his teeth as his heart squeezed tighter.

Dimitri stumbled ahead of him without warning, not so much heading down the stairs as almost falling over himself — the stairs ran out before he could, and so he landed with his feet on the ground.

“Dimitri?” Dedue asked as he caught up to him. Dimitri’s shoulders jerked up around his ears. Dedue waited for Dimitri to relax even just a little before he continued. “Do we need to go back?”

“No. I was only startled by something,” Dimitri answered with that same strained face as before. “I simply heard something unsettling, or maybe odd is a better word, I suppose. I’m sorry for being jumpy today. After all, everything’s alright... isn’t it?” 

“It is.” Dedue had realized even in that moment that the plan may not have been entirely sound, but the response at least let Dimitri’s tension ease as he looked out across the garden.

“...It really is lovely today,” Dimitri said once he’d recollected himself. Dedue nodded.. “I think we may have a kitchen garden somewhere, actually. That might be of some interest to you.”

“It is.” That was all they said as they strolled the outer rim of the garden, towards an archway leading elsewhere. While the green between the gate and the main body of the castle was large, while there were padlocks by the stable, and he’d even heard of a small pasture within the walls, it sometimes felt like he was living in a tightly-wound maze that Dimitri navigated on his behalf, keeping him from smacking into one of the walls that towered over them and cut out pieces of the high, vaulted sky. On that day, his navigation felt almost rudderless. 

The path they took hadn’t been properly swept yet — petals torn off of poppies and twigs littered the cobbled walkways. And amid that storm detritus came one thing more than the rest — a young juniper, likely only freshly planted to replace some gap in the line, fallen into the way. Its roots rose sideways into the air, some of the dirt still clinging to them. Dedue crouched down beside it in the name of inspection. A branch still bearing the first traces of pale blue berries had snapped on impact; that much was apparent when he tried to move it. Other than that, though, it seemed unharmed.

“Is it going to die?” Dimitri had asked from somewhere behind him. His voice had a high crack in the middle that carried it further than anyone might have wanted it to, not when it sounded so far-away and truly mournful for the thing. He looked embarrassed, clearing his throat uneasily when Dedue glanced back up to check.

“It is not too late,” he’d answered reassuringly. It was a hardy plant, even if it was young, and Dedue ran his fingers through the scaly needles, still green, still pliant to the touch. “It just needs to be moved back into the ground.” 

“...I see.” Dimitri was very quiet, as if that would shove the noise he’d made back in him. While Dedue thought he might be relieved, judging from the softness of Dimitri’s tone, there was also the chance that if Dedue checked those blue eyes, they’d have slipped into the glass jewels that had begun this walk. He wanted to believe he’d heard relief that this plant still had a fighting chance, no matter how rough its first storm had been. It had been a storm that had broken it away from everything it had ever clung to. With a small huff from his nose, Dedue’s lips curved wryly. Just exactly what was he thinking? Whoever had failed to check up on it, leaving it sadly on its side like that, didn’t deserve to work on such a garden as this. 

“I can set it back as it should be, rather than waiting. Though I do not have the shears for the hurt branch.” A shame, that. He would have to check on it later. He ran his hands over it, seeking out its main trunk at the core of the whippy young branches, checking for other damage. He lifted it upright, angling himself to face the bed as he held the plant. It tottered unsteadily in the hole it had deserted and tilted back over when he went to remove his hands. It would barely be a trouble to hold it steady while he moved the dirt back over and around it; however, it would take longer. “I am sorry for stopping us.”

When he didn’t get a response, Dedue had looked up and saw that, even if there had been relief before then, it had retreated as Dimitri’s eyes shifted, looking for all the world like a pair of rolling marbles; people had noticed them now, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. Dedue didn’t know what it was — only that it bruised his heart black and blue to watch those frantic jerks of dark-ringed eyes.

“Dimitri,” he’d said, and now, in the present, he’d analyzed every word of that sentence for error; he’d memorized it. “Would you do something for me, please? It is very small, but I would appreciate an extra hand to help me hold this steady.”

He hadn’t immediately noticed the way the background hum of people going about their business had stopped. What he’d noticed instead was that Dimitri had snapped back to Dedue, had nodded and crouched down by Dedue’s side, a rare moment when their faces were roughly level, and Dedue could see the earnest focus the prince put into attending.

“I think I can manage that. I honestly shouldn’t be trusted with plants,” Dimitri had made a self-deprecating noise best described as a laugh impersonator.”How should I hold it?”

It was when he was preparing to answer that question that Dedue had looked up. Had noticed the silence that sucked everything else out of the air. The man and woman half-armored who’d been admiring the bellflowers were shooting strange looks at them. The woman eating sweet buns on a stone bench had stopped mid-mouthful. She’d looked sad, but when Dedue’s eyes met hers, her nose wrinkled in disgust. She swallowed in a heavy gulp without once breaking eye contact.

Even thinking of it now made Dedue’s heart spin in a whirlpool. He’d kept looking from eye to eye, heartbeat slamming into audability as he met those perplexing expressions. Some eyes were on Dimitri with a hard mourning. Some were on him, more disdainful. Not a one lacked tension, fixed on this simple scene. He’d kept wondering, was still wondering — What had made it so wrong? Was there a better way to phrase it? Was the question itself wrong? His heart went on, but his lungs, his shoulder, his arm, his hand had frozen down to the fingers. It must have been at least a little wrong, he knew it was a burden, he’d understood, but Dimitri had answered so calmly and  _ what is about to happen?  _ The air bristled with knives and needles unseen. He couldn’t breathe.

Then someone scoffed, and the tension broke; the pair at the bellflowers turned back to the bellflowers, the distant figures at the edge of the courtyard resumed their stroll, the woman turned her head to take another bite. And Dimitri had asked how he should hold the plant again, as if there was nothing wrong with it.

“...Have I done something wrong?” Dedue had asked while he held the plant as an example, reaching around its base to hold the trunk. His voice hadn’t come out right; it sounded so stunned that Dimitri’s face lost its strange distance, became real and present and worried for him.

“I’m not sure what you mean. You haven’t really done anything.”

Dedue only stared worriedly in response, and did not let go right away when Dimitri’s hand wrapped exceedingly gingerly around plant as directed, his hand all but open around the trunk so he barely touched it.

Now that the anxiety was dying — for whatever had happened, it didn’t seem like something truly terrible would come of it — his face went red as he tentatively let go and began to replace the dirt over the now steady plant. Embarrassing. But it may have been more than that.

He looked up — not at Dimitri, but at the people who were beginning to filter out of the garden with studious disregard. None of them were doing anything. No step advanced towards them. The woman with the sweet buns didn’t come over and scold him; the pair by the bellflowers were now heading towards the stairs as if nothing worth those glances was occuring. Had it only been that they’d noticed Dedue and disapproved? No.

“Are you well?” Dimitri leaned forward until their faces were only a few inches apart. He should still have been asking that question of himself.

“Everyone was staring when I asked you to help me,” Dedue managed.

“Really?” Dimitri looked more baffled than anything else as he glanced up and around at the mostly-vacant garden, morphing to faint irritation as he caught only the backs of these very innocent people. His next words came out flinty. “Oh, I see. Some people are so stubborn and hidebound, it’s completely unreasonable.” He shook his head, trying to wipe the frown from his lips.. “...Let them think what they want. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

An answer which told him many things. There was something wrong. If it was somehow beneath the honor of a prince, why was no one coming to say something? To take it from his hands and scold one or both of them? Why not  _ do something _ for him? Dedue’s hands on the soil told him to hold back, to go slowly, to be gentle with the juniper. He wasn’t listening to himself. He scooped up the dirt roughly and pressed it down over the top of the roots, where clods tumbled down through the criss-crossing layers. The plant’s trunk shook in Dimitri’s hand as spare flecks of dirt spattered on it. 

“I...think that if it weren’t you, no one would have minded, even if it means a prince gets his hands dirty at your request. I certainly don’t mind, and it’s unreasonable that they might.” Dimitri’s face fell back onto Dedue — the sympathy in his eyes felt like an act of will, so intent and honed that it pushed it too hard. But Dimitri’s voice was flatter than that, and his feelings were normally carried there more perfectly than in his face. So it was a milder, less distressed absolution which melted over him like the sunlight, loosening up muscles he hadn’t entirely known he’d tensed. Dedue gently tapped the top layer of dirt down over the roots in response, with the slowness and patience he’d needed before. “I mean that, I truly, truly mean that, understand? I’m not in the slightest bit bothered, and I’m truly glad to help, and as it’s me being asked, that’s what matters.”

“Thank you, then,” he’d said, still uncertain. “We will have to keep an eye on it, but I believe it will be fine.”

“Really? How nice. I know it’d be arrogant of me to act like I was of much help, but it’s nice,” Dimitri had sounded wistful as they’d both stood up to go. “My hands aren’t useless, if only for a little bit.”

Dedue couldn’t ask for more than that, he simply could not get it, not without shattering the feeling that, in having done all of that, even his errors, he may have been a little useful to Dimitri’s heart. The gardens were waiting before them, and the uncertainty and fear could be, for both of them, briefly set aside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> F is for Faerghus. It's a shame it's not for Fun.


	6. F is for Faerghus

The woman who called herself Cornelia Arnim considered this whole affair to be something of a fiasco, even if the potential for instability from the regency council was _ immense _. But the council was giving her a headache. It was just a cold room full of sycophantic pigs snorting the air at the smell of fresh slop. They weren’t terribly interesting as puppets or tools, the newly-minted regent and his collection of cronies. They couldn’t even recognize that they were pigs, and wasn’t that just sad? None of them were grand noblemen; the room didn’t have a Fraldarius or a Gautier, or even just an equal in terms of clout. Also, at least one of them — one of the regent’s drinking buddies (which described about 2/3rds of the room), a minor noble who’d run in Rufus’ circle since his own academy days — seemed unaware of the fact that she was not there for his personal amusement.

But she smiled sweetly at him from across the table, and tried to think of how best to use him. Cornelia Arnim’s body had its advantages as a lure, at least, even if the fish weren’t the ones she was hoping for. If she needed to get anyone that way, it’d be the man himself. She’d been planning that the Agarthans would have owned Faerghus by now, using the dear ickle prince’s secret stepmother, wise and noble, stepping into the limelight for the first time. Obviously not the real thing, she was much too whiny and sentimental, depressing and depressed — and this was Cornelia’s opinion as the woman who had had to lure in Patricia. It had been stunningly easy, which had made the plan seem viable. Patricia had wanted so terribly to see her little girl again; she’d offered that wish for Cornelia to use however she liked. They’d spoken with other nobles, ones who were so wildly ambitious that they dreamt of freezing time so their precious kingdom would always be theirs. Ones so hungry they wanted to devour the land. They’d promised Patrcia she’d get what she really wanted, if she was only willing to take a little risk.

The plan had been, obviously, that Patricia would never see her little girl again. Or anyone else, for that matter. The attack from the nobles’ henchmen went off without a hitch. They’d even kept the prince alive, if only just, which would have made things easier. (Now, she wasn’t sure if it was something she wanted. He might have to be neutralized somehow, was the thing.) But after they’d walked Patricia away from the carnage and killed her in secret, that was where things went wrong. Because those _ moronic _ soldiers showed up, some detached battalion catching up a little too late. Their _ absurd _ vengeance culture rearing its head like a bunch of sharks smelling blood in the water. That _ pathetic _ Gustave had arrived too early. They hadn’t had time to get _ their _ Patricia ready for her miraculous survival, and so, Patricia simply had not survived in any form. All they had to show for it was the slaughter of an entire town and a sizable power vacuum currently being stuffed with hot air. Which wasn’t _ bad, _ necessarily, there was some quality chaos and a lot of raw material, but it was second place. But there were advantages.

Such as the scene playing out before her right now — once you tossed out the more worthless parts, like 90% of the animals littering this room. One of the more studious members of the council — it paid for anyone important to have at his command some little man with nervous energy, bookish disposition, and the patience for paperwork, and Rufus for the time being had this one — was explaining a situation. The son of a minor nobleman had been, according to contacts with official church messengers sent to observe and aid while the kingdom was in this transitional stage, found to be involved as a conspirator in the Tragedy. This was, and about half the room knew it, not remotely true.

“Your Highness,” asked the obligatory bookish man to the regent, “What would you like to do concerning Lord Lonato’s son?”

“...They say he was involved in the king, my brother’s, murder, do they?” asked Rufus, lifting his head from his hand, and sitting back upright in his chair. He was popular with women for a reason, besides his loose spending — the Blaiddyd men bred tall and prone to tapering appealingly from strong shoulder to toned waist, and Rufus had kept himself in that same shape as he’d entered into his early 40s — his face was lined slightly, marked at his eyes and the corners of his mouth with the careless smiles of an adult life lived with abandon. His hair was warmer than his brother’s or nephew’s, not cool blond that had darkened from an infant ice-white, but a vividly red-gold color that blazed thick and sunny all throughout his life. 

“That’s as they report,” answered the man. “They are, of course, offering themselves as aid in the matter of capturing him, while we’re so short-handed.”

“Let them, then. I’m sure their information is accurate.” Rufus brought his chin back down onto his hand. Of course, Cristophe Gaspard had nothing to do with any of this. About half the room knew it, and some of them were so faint of heart they looked shocked or appalled. _ What precious little cowards. _ Cornelia made a note about them for later. 

“My lord,” said one, tentatively. “Lord Lonato was once a knight in your service, was he not? As his lord...” 

The other half of the room, the half that didn’t know, looked righteous, and one of them answered first in defense of his lord.

“If Lord Lonato allowed his son to contemplate such monstrosity, then he has betrayed both his lord the archduke and his lord the king; what he ought to do is take revenge into his own hands!”

“I intend to. But not concerning Christophe.” Rufus looked only like he was shoving away a boring chore. As it was: this would let the church think they were busy with something, that was all. “We have more significant action that must be taken than to concern ourselves with him.”

“Ah, yes. Lord Kleinman has a report, Your Highness. It appears emissaries from Duscur’s council of aldermen have come to him seeking peace terms.”

“He should have sent them on to me, not a report.” Rufus glowered. “I am regent.”

“He already knows your answer though, right?” said one man with too much of a smile. He chuckled. “He’s the one dishing out the punishment. You can’t possibly go and fight yourself.”

“I can!” Rufus snarled, pounding the table with his fist. Papers and mugs of beer shook as the whole structure rattled. That was why they couldn’t just replace a Blaiddyd — even the crestless ones had surprising strength. And the ones with crests were beyond even that, monsters in human skin. Their experiments, Solon had told her, were showing _ real _ results now, but they weren’t going _ that well _. Rufus’s strength bristled under his shirt-sleeves as the old nerve in him, one she’d have thought killed by drink and sex, reeled as it was struck. “I can, and so I must, or none will believe it of me!”

Everyone was silent until he sat back down, drained his beer and handed the tankard to a servant to have it filled again.

“His part in this measure may be great, but he must remember who has the crown’s authority if he is to receive the crown’s reward.” His cheeks were just the tiniest bit flush when he proclaimed that, the color fading slightly in the next moment.

“Ah, my lord…” said a secretary, who’d been standing by the door with a look of apprehension.”Prince Dimitri has been outside for some time now, demanding to see you. Again. Should I let him in?”

A few people made pitying noises. Rufus dug the heel of his palm into his forehead, preparing himself for what was to follow. He had been avoiding the prince’s efforts to speak to him seriously for some time now. Since the boy had gotten back up onto his feet, more or less. Cornelia had been politely helping him with that, citing the prince’s condition as a reason not to let them talk. ‘He’s been _ so traumatized _ after all, we don’t want to upset him further.’ That kind of thing.

“Very well, bring him in.” Rufus sighed. That story couldn’t go on forever, nice as it was for him not to deal with that child. His little brother’s son. 

There were probably people who hadn’t seen the prince properly since the tragedy, and they looked appalled when the drawn little figure entered the room — which was, in its own ways, comical. They had just casually tossed a young man to his death not a moment ago; now, one grave-looking boy was enough to tug at their heartstrings? _ He’s not even doing that badly anymore! _He only trembled a little as he strode forward, as much anger as nerves. 

“Uncle, you must put a stop to this violence,” the prince proclaimed. Oh, yes. He needed to be handled, one way or another.

* * *

“You can’t do this!” “I know what I saw!” Those shouts, high and shattered with fury, had resounded from the walls behind Dedue for a long time, and more besides. Dimitri fought alone in a room where men too important to look at Dedue discussed whether Faerghus would end the retaliation against Duscur now or throw the full weight of the crown’s knights into it. Eventually, there came a wooden cracking noise like a tree collapsing and a great clatter from inside — metal, glass, wood tumbling down onto the stone. The regent’s council shouted in frustration and disgust, their words muffled until only tone remained.

The lady Cornelia had seen Dimitri out after that sound, with Dimitri clutching his left arm as a nasty bruise welled up through it, still shouting. She’d handed Dimitri over with a reminder not to get too worked up; if the arm continued to hurt, she’d have to check it for re-fracturing. 

“I understand you’re upset, Your Highness, but you will have to apologize for the table when you calm down, okay?” She’d said, patting him on the shoulder. She glanced at Dedue, cold and dismissive. Dedue glared back, but she tossed out her order without regard. “You. Keep an eye on him.”

Dimitri hadn’t responded sensibly. He’d cried and he’d shouted, still carrying out his arguments. His apologies and shouts had given Dedue time to sit them both down on the steps, try and recover his own wits. He felt at once stunned and a gnawing cold misery: He should have known.

Dimitri’s words had been barely coherent enough for Dedue to assemble what had gone on. They’d said Dimitri was confused. That he hadn’t seen what he said he’d seen — he hadn’t seen his father’s killers the way he thought he had. Not if he said they weren’t from Duscur. The king’s life must be paid for. So the war would not be postponed, would not be stopped, not if he could not produce names for the regent that showed the people of Duscur innocent. 

But he could not produce names. So all he could do was insist and shout and plead until he was like this, his voice worn to shreds, his arm aching, his whole being unfocused and unraveled. The blood would be spilled. That was all there was to it: what other price for a king was there?

“I don’t know who they were... Father, how can this be for you, when it has nothing to do with your killers?! How can you want innocent people to die?!” Dimitri muttered into the echoing expanse. The stairway stretched out before them, descending away from the formal council room into an open hall. The sounds of people were distant, muffled by stone walls. Dedue didn’t attempt to answer him yet. He wasn’t sure he could have. And so Dimitri went on. “...I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll get it right. I will. I’m....” He shut his eyes, lowering his head into his hands. “I’m sorry, Dedue.”

This was the first time Dimitri had acknowledged him, and so Dedue had to finally try and find something to say. Everything in him was squeezed tense — his shoulders, his gut, his jaw were all tight, and it was hard to find a way around it.

“It is not your war,” he answered, eventually. A sigh parted his lips. Dedue could only stare upwards at the great, vaulted ceiling. He was not used to feeling small.

“If I’d only been calmer, would they have believed me?” Dimitri asked, the fury of his voice inward. Dedue was not sure if he entirely believed Dimitri, either. He would have liked to, but Dedue wasn’t entirely sure how to trust his mind; in moments like these, when _ everything _ was so close to the surface, it seemed like a ship tossed on the waves. Everything that day had been so confused. Instead, he shrugged. His feet descended down another step, his long legs slipping from their fold. The floor was a great way down.

“Not if they would not think about you when you are...hurt,” is what he said, his voice deliberate, stiff, quiet. He couldn’t say what he was feeling; he didn’t want to. Just let it flatten like a plain until he could build something useful on it. “Perhaps once they have had a battle, they will be tired of it. It will stop.”

“It shouldn’t be happening at all!” Dimitri answered. Obviously, but that wasn’t helpful, save spiritually. “If we could stop it before a true war breaks out, then it’d be OK!” He lifted himself back up to his feet, wincing from his arm. Dedue half-turned to watch the prince pace.”What if I ran away?”

“Where?” Dedue raised an eyebrow.

“To the border, of course! My uncle might be in charge here, but I am the crown prince… And the common soldiers and knights agitate for my father’s sake. The fools,” Dimitri’s eyes narrowed, bitter words breaking through his clenched jaw. His footfalls bounced off the stone. “But surely, they’d listen?” 

The idea had allure; it shimmered between them as a gossamer dream, intangible as light, but just as real. 

“Perhaps…” Their eyes met and held one another, hope sparking for a moment; they’d pack in the dead of night. They’d hurry there, as swiftly as they could, carried on the wind; speak with passion and valor; be heard by people who must have been, in their own ways, simply trying to do what seemed just. 

Dedue tore his eyes away from it. It hurt more than he wanted it to.

“No, you should not.” It stung to say, but the truth had sunk in.

“Why not?” Dimitri’s voice lifted, his footsteps coming to a halt.

“You are not well enough to travel alone. We would be slow and caught together.” Dimitri was much recovered now, at least physically, but a country away was too far. Dimitri knew that and sagged with a shake of his head. 

“...If we were caught, you would certainly bear the brunt of consequences as if you’d kidnapped me,” he said, to Dedue’s surprise. He hadn’t thought about what would happen to _ him _. “I don’t want to imagine what would happen to you, or to everyone else as a result.”

“Hm. Second, even if you managed to move the soldiers and knights… If you cannot move their leaders, they will find more soldiers,” Faerghus was a rack of swords; Faerghus was a place where they said children of their high families learned to fight from the time they were born. The leaders themselves could fight best of all. So there would always be more until there was no one left. 

“I hate this.” Dimitri’s gaze eventually broke, and he dropped himself back down onto the steps next to Dedue. It should have been a relief to hear — it prickled up against him instead, like a leg half-asleep. Tears weren’t dripping down Dimitri’s face, but they bubbled through as he spoke, his hands covering his face. When his hands dropped, slowly, they left red, scratchy trails. “I hate being so weak. People are going to die — not just soldiers, but fathers and mothers and —! Doesn’t anyone care?”

Part of Dedue was glad Dimitri cared, even if it meant watching him tearing himself to pieces like this. Part of Dedue felt Dimitri’s hands, only closing on air, grabbing him and pulling his heart, and he didn’t want that. He wanted nothing. Dedue’s teeth found his inner lip and bit down on it, unsure which part should win. It was a tiring battle. 

“You do,” he answered, unable to catch what feeling with which he meant it. The feeling in his voice wasn’t relieved, but he went on, “And I need this of you.” He reached out to grab Dimitri’s hands, take them back from the edge before they did more damage. 

“Of course,” Dimitri’s answer was more confused than confident. The hands in Dedue’s grip went slack, stopped resisting. They were limp and lost and defeated. Dedue let them retreat back to Dimitri’s lap. Dimitri had turned to watch Dedue’s face. His eyes looked clearer than they had since he’d gone in the other room — clear enough to see the way Dedue’s jaw was clenched tight and how Dedue hated it, clear enough to see the way his eyelids trembled with what he could not keep holding back. Things clicked, it seemed, and Dedue was surprised to hear Dimitri sniffle back a tear. “I’m sorry; it’s selfish of me to go on like this, when it’s so hard on you. But I refuse to surrender, and neither should you.”

“So what will you do? Will you continue to ask?” He tried to ignore the matter of himself, of how hard it _ was _. He rested his hand on the stone, shutting his eyes and feeling its polished surface under his hand. His fingertips brushed over little pits and light flecks marring the darker shades. Dedue envied it — cold and quiet and stable; it hadn’t so much as warmed under him. It endured everything, and it felt nothing. It didn’t wonder if that place was home, even with nothing left for him but memories that toyed with comforting and hurting him. It didn’t have to remember. It didn’t clench itself, toes to teeth, when the memories of swords and fire still echoed, summoned by the flames burning miles away, summoned by the sound of knights, summoned by the knowledge that right behind him, at that moment, were men who would toss a world into that fire if it only satisfied their blood. It could simply not have those feelings when it couldn’t do anything about them. 

“If I can start by clearing the names of the people of Duscur… Then there surely everyone will see sense. I know there are people who don’t want this — they _ can’t _. But everyone is hurt and frightened. If they understand, then we can make peace and make things right!” He insisted, clenching his hands over the air. But he didn’t begin to scratch himself again. “I owe it to you, and everyone who died, and everyone who will die. I will… try to remember anything that could point to their true identities. I know it might not be heard at all. Fools. Fools.” Dimitri shook his head, his eyes tightening. His hands balled into white-knuckled fists, tremors running through them. Dedue pressed his hand harder onto the stone, trying to block out what was creeping in him like the first freeze. How hopeless it all was — someone who had actual courage, trying to plead for human lives with men like that. “But I can’t stand for Faerghus’ justice to be used as nothing but a cudgel.”

And Dedue’s hand slipped off the step. His knuckles, so tense they could have burst through his skin, scraped against it. The tendons in his neck froze into place, wound like a clock whose springs went tighter and tighter, until finally — he snapped. 

“That is what it is,” he said, voice plain and simple, and finally dropping a weight. He didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. Why was he saying this? It would be easier if he didn’t. His throat tightened like it might choke him. “They do not _ want _ your words to matter, and so, they will not work. What they wish for is battle. What happens next is of no consequence to them. 

“Perhaps some it is just.” He almost tossed the words at Dimitri, whose eyes were wide and staring, wounded at not being believed even by Dedue. Then they drew nearly to a close, softly, which was worse. He must have seen how misty Dedue looked. He felt like an avalanche, moving downhill — his words came with a building momentum, inexorable.“I cannot judge. I know that Duscur is like anywhere, maybe even here… There are good and bad people. Murderers. Children. But it is all the same to them. How could it ever stop?”

He took a long breath, found it harder than he expected; it sputtered and broke before becoming deep enough. He was not yet crying — but he understood, he would. He couldn’t stop anymore; he’d broken at last, and now he could simply keep sliding down into his own depths. Part of him wanted to stop. To keep going on with the life he’d found worth living after the people who’d made his life before were gone, pretending he’d never felt like this. He shut his hands tight. They were shaking with bottled-up feeling.

“I truly...hate it. All of it. I hate knowing what Faerghus can do, will do, _ has done _ . I hate being looked at the same as if I had killed your father myself.” But going on as if it weren’t true wouldn’t make it untrue — still. He felt like as he pulled and pulled, it just went deeper. Feelings dark as night he hadn’t _ named _, had put aside. It wasn’t hot — it was cold, so cold. It was drowning and freezing at once. He envied the stones, he really did: stones didn’t turn themselves over and see something they hated. “I hate the way I am spoken of… They way only I could not be let by your side when you were hurt, because of them… And —” His eyes fell on Dimitri, then, and he understood. There was nothing that feeling did not touch. He recalled the way Dimitri’s feelings could drag his own out of him, and now — now that face, lips tense, eyebrows set gravely, and eyes red-rimmed and so, so sad for him — so uninjured by all Dedue had said, save that he didn’t believe. So undefended, like Dedue could plunge in a knife.

“...I hate how ugly I am, to feel the way I do,” Dedue croaked, unable to look at that gods-cursed face a moment longer. He couldn’t change how he felt, not anymore, but he could stop. He could turn away; it would just have to be bolted up inside of him, turning his innards black with frostbite. 

“I think you’re right to be angry,” Dimitri answered, which made it all worse. “You’re right to hate all of this...What happened that day, what’s happened since, is monstrous, and nothing else. Even if no one else sees that right now, I…” His voice was shaking. Still somehow, Dedue was the one with the knife in him when Dimitri said, “feel like that, too. I don’t mean to say they compare, but… I think your fury just.”

“Dimitri, you do not understand.” He was unable to bolt it in if Dimitri kept dragging it out — _ stop, just stop. _ “It is still uglier than that… To hate all that I hate.”

“Oh.” Dimitri’s face briefly slackened, until it somehow — worse than anything — masked itself in a bland little smile, the smile of the Prince of Faerghus. Even if it collapsed almost instantly, it had been placed. The eyebrows drawn sadly together, the smile reaching his eyes not happily, but with soft self-deprecation. ”Me.”

“...I do not know if it is hate. I do not know the right word.” He knew just the right word in his own language, and said it aloud then — a word that meant something that ground you like wheat in a mill until you were bitter and tired.

It hung there in the air, waiting for something, but all Dimitri could do was shake his head. He couldn’t translate that one, either. Before Dimitri could say anything, Dedue held up his hand. The feeling was awake, alive, trapped under his ribs and locked up in his lungs, his neck, his closed-off teeth. The borrowed tongue fell away from him, then he returned to his own. Dimitri would have to keep up, to guess over gaps in his knowledge of the language, as Dedue so often had to with him. He couldn’t say it any other way. 

“<I am… mad at you, sometimes. Something like that, anyway. I’m mad at who you are and what you mean.

“<You are the ‘prince’ of Faerghus. And this is so important that I’m unworthy of you to _ everyone _ . You bear their name! They kill for that name, for your father’s name, for that title I barely understand! Your good name is… so precious to them. But when the time comes…>” Turning this on Dimitri hurt. But that truth also hounded him — it leapt up his closed-off throat. He hurried over the words, not looking to see if he was understood. Dimitri did not try to stop him — good enough. “<It’s all meaningless. It’s all _ useless _. It’s cruel to ask you to carry this, but if you can’t, then no one will. I see that, now. It’s cruel that you’re the only one there is to ask.

“<And…Sometimes, I’m mad at you because I think…>”Dedue’s feelings crested, swelling up in his chest until they pounded against him, and came out the only way they could. Hot tears pooled in his eyes and dropped smoothly down. His voice was small and hoarse, a pained whisper. “<Why me, Dimitri? Why not save someone else?>” 

The bit of Dedue that pounded against his breastbone like a maddened, captured bird wanted Dimitri to not understand. Or more; say Dedue had no right to feel that way about his savior, or to say he did the best he could, or to say there was some reason for it to be him — some divine reason, some calculated reason, some reason less or more than that even the life of a stranger could be precious. Then Dedue could be truly mad at him, truly angry, then he could admire Dimitri a little less, care for him a little less, cut Faerghus into one great bloody clump and hate it all with a chill he’d hardly known was there until this moment, when he looked it in that hollow-eyed face. 

And when the hate had wrung out of him like tears, he really could turn his heart into stone.

But Dimitri didn’t say that. Not a word of it. Instead, he frowned, his eyes gone soft teardrop blue. He almost reached out a hand, but though it hovered in the space between them for a moment, it retreated to fall back onto his lap.

“I know that, for everyone I could not save then and cannot save now, there is neither excuse nor forgiveness. It would be mad, not to hate me after how much we’ve hurt you...There’s nothing ugly about it.” Dimitri stared at the hand he had almost reached out, his expression still somewhere far away from it. The silence stretched until he looked Dedue head-on again, a sad smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as he whispered, small and hoarse, “It’s OK.”

Something thawed out inside him at those words, easing into the shelter they gave him. It was OK. Nothing could make its way out of Dedue save tears. Silent, marked only by the faintest tremor that ran through him. It was OK. That black frost was still somewhere inside of him, and that was OK. Dimitri’s answer took him by the hand and warmed him, piece by piece, massaging his jaw until it let go, until his fingers and toes unclenched, until that feeling had surrendered him. All the things he’d gambled on Dimitri’s answer, all the things he’d considering throwing aside, all the rest of _ him _ came back to meet him, shocking as a spring flood — his heart, his hope, his life. 

His shoulders shook; his throat worked to make a breathless whine. Dimitri’s hand reached for him, and Dedue slumped into the touch wordlessly. Stone could never be warmed like this, not if it sat in the sun a million years.

“I won’t give up. I swear. I swear. I...I’m sorry you have to ask that. I’m so sorry.” Dimitri murmured, voice bare. And this, too, was a hurt stone couldn’t know. He had survived. They had survived, and this was all the reason that there was for it. Dimitri’s body heat was added to Dedue’s side as he, all the parts of the Prince of Faerghus that were simply Dimitri, leaned his head against Dedue’s shoulders. When Dedue didn’t shift away, a sob tore from him. He looked up through lashes only a little darker gold than the rest of him, blue summer skies streaked through with cloudy tears. He whispered something from the back of his throat. . “It really is a painful thing to wonder, isn’t it?”

All Dedue could say for his understanding was in the way he leaned his own weight against Dimitri’s side. The smaller boy didn’t fold or crumple, but stayed, their figures leaned close to one another. His tears fell onto Dimitri’s hair as they slid down his face; Dimitri’s tears pooled against Dedue’s neck. It was regret and hurt in them, hate and frustration. They were surprisingly warm. The boys huddled on each other’s shoulder, there on the steps before the regent’s council chamber. When the adults exited, they would have to go around. The two of them wouldn’t be moved just yet. He didn’t have to move. He didn’t have to attempt to stop. For a long time, they simply wept for a world they could not change. They didn’t speak another word until all the tears had been wrung out from the bottom of Dedue’s heart, from Dimitri’s heart, from the burning plains of Duscur, miles and miles away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay.  
Next Time: G is for Garden.


	7. G is for Garden

Dedue’s steps took him winding through the gardens, alone through the palace’s series of closed-off bursts of life. He couldn’t remain in his room all afternoon, but Dimitri had been called away for the afternoon. He considered the library, which had become somewhere he was seen at often enough that the strangeness of his presence was beginning to wear off on the people who worked there, and he knew where he might find a quiet corner (in later days, the kitchen would become another such place. But this day was before he’d tried cooking). But the castle’s air whispered, heavy and full. He tried to escape them as they gave chase. A weak sunlight filtered through a cover of grey clouds up above him — it felt like it would rain, so he’d likely be forced back inside. But it meant that most people were rushing through outdoor work.

His steps were leading him back in search of somewhere — quiet, solitary, out-of-the-way. He thought he remembered how they’d gotten back from there the first time — that little hollow between the walls, left neglected. It still took him longer than he’d liked, but eventually, he spotted the gap in the wall that marked his bolthole. He ducked under it.

It was silly to think of this place as his, this patch of tall grass and struggling flowers, its unruly white roses crawling up the old walls, its unruly hedges. He wasn’t sure it was truly anyone’s, though. A distant cry of birds rose up as he settled himself up against a wall, letting the stones brush up against his back. The poppies here were a different type than the ones in the main gardens, a breed he didn’t recognize, still budding. Dandelions already ahead of Faerghus’ short growing season, a vibrant gold. A tall flower on grassy stalks with little bell-like flowers on thin stems. Scattered wildflowers whose names he didn’t know, the roses, and the deep green rambling shape of that hedge blocking the door. In the winter, the freeze would snap all but the hardiest of them to sagging brown pieces, and in the spring, everything that had fallen under the frozen soil would return when it thawed. All alone. It ached.

But that was for the best, wasn’t it? The garden could only welcome him because it was a ruin: neglected, ignored, its blossoms left wild. If someone took care of it, someone would be here. This place would lose that special, secret, private heart.

The back of Dedue’s head hit the stone wall as he stared upwards. He rocked forward and let his head drop back against it again. A low exasperation breathed through him, coming out in a sigh. Even if the garden kept going without anyone’s involvement — and even if he was better off if no one ever noticed it — he felt restless. He stepped away from the wall and began to walk the triangle of the garden, looking for something in it to tell him its original shape. The grass and the flowers blended into each other seamlessly; it didn’t seem like the courtyard had been paved, but the slope suggested there might have been a raised bed, but maybe not; Castle Fhirdiad was not level. That thought dissolved when his boot stepped down with a firm  _ thud _ on stone. He bent down, brushing aside a bobble-headed wildflower to see the stone, covered in dirt and moss, underfoot. There weren’t any others on its short side, but… He pushed his hands forward, following the stone’s length. And there was another, a little more buried. He stood up and walked forward in a curved line, feeling for more with each step. He almost made a game of it, keeping his feet on as narrow a band as he could, one directly in front of the next until his steps wobbled. It was meaningless, but it felt like progress when he recognized its turn back towards the wall to form little flattened semi-circle of stone. When he reached the wall’s tangenting edges, he turned back and knelt near the bed. He wasn’t sure why – he let himself move on impulse. 

He reached for a tuft of grass where its tall blades converging to a single stalk. Clearly unsuitable for a garden. He wrapped his hand around it, low enough to the ground that his hand touched earth – and then yanked up harshly. The blades creased his palm as the roots came loose into the air, shedding clods of dirt. You had to go deep, or a plant like that was liable to come back. But he did miss his gloves.

There were a lot of things he could have missed, if he didn’t place the weed next to him and keep going. The list would have just spiraled – at least for a moment, he could find another of the same weed and try and pull it up. This one was less successful; the stem snapped off in his hand, leaving him to glare down at it. 

_ Well, we try again, _ he thought, and went for another grip on the nub that remained. It was satisfying as cold water when it finally came out, down the roots. He smiled benevolently at something with white buds – best leave it. Best leave all of it, really; he didn’t know what he expected to accomplish. There was no way he could clean this all up, but he felt the heat of his efforts working through the muscles of his shoulder blades and across his back. Plants that had been lost amid the weedy grasses began to emerge, getting the small burst of sunlight for the first time.

The sunlight died swiftly, though, as a cool drop of rain hit the back of Dedue’s palm. And another. Droplets scattered across his hair and onto his nose, showering his arms and sliding under the collar of his shirt. He looked upwards at a sky opening its floodgates. He held out his hand to catch the rain. It stung the scratches on its palm as drop after drop turned the dirt on his fingers into mud. Even so, he didn’t immediately get up and go. If he’d left the weeds right where he’d put them, it would hardly feel like he’d been trying to take care of it. It might just be an excuse, but that was fine. So as the rain picked up he went back and collected what he’d pulled.

“Oh… There you are.” Dimitri’s voice was a shock as sudden as the first drop. Though it was warmer as Dimitri sighed with relief. Dimitri stood in the gap of the wall, panting. Water plastered his golden hair to his neck and face, darkened it to the color of tarnish. The shoulders of his fine shirt were soaked, and the rest of his clothes weren’t so far behind.

“What are you doing here?” Dedue asked, crossing over to him. He was going to get sick if he stayed out in the weather as it was. “You are getting wet.” 

“I could tell you much the same. I was just worried…” Dimitri paused, looking away as his hand propped him against the wall while he caught his breath. Dedue thought he saw something wild in the way the whites of Dimitri’s eyes ringed his irises, clearly and completely, but Dimitri forced it down. “Never mind. I was just looking for you.”

“Should I have waited for you to finish?” He hadn’t expected Dimitri to be done so soon. Dimitri shook his head and didn’t move to get more out of the rain. If it was windy, their position would have offered a great deal of shelter, where the rain hit the walls as much as anything — but the rain dropped straight onto them. 

“No, that’s fine. It wouldn’t be worth anyone’s time to ask you to do that over just… Another round of condolences,” Dimitri ran a hand through his hair, shifting the sopping mop back out of his face, which bore a strange and bitter expression unsuited to him. He shook it off, but remained shaking slightly. Dedue shifted the bundle of weeds into his off hand so he could reach out and grab Dimitri’s. 

“Let us go inside before you become sick,” Dedue insisted, tugging Dimitri along. Someone had to watch out for him, that much was abundantly clear. He had to duck on his way out of the garden, and they both remained hunched against the rain as they hurried back. Their footsteps outstripped the patter of rain, but they were both drenched through by the time Dimitri closed the door to a large room behind them. Rain dripped off of Dedue and onto the stone floor, leaving puddles as the rain grayed and grew harder, sloshing down the iron-framed windows.

“You should have stopped looking when it began to rain,” Dedue scolded — though it came out a little softer than he expected, fond and amused. 

“You weren’t exactly coming in by yourself, so I was glad to come get you, after all.” Dimitri chuckled with his answer, smiling in such a way that Dedue struggled to find an answer to it. 

“I would have when I was done,” Dedue answered, thoughtfully. He considered the weeds he was still carrying in one hand, turning them over, where they dripped down his wrist before falling down onto the stone below. He had to, reluctantly, release the little bit of warmth of Dimitri’s hand.

“What were you doing out there, if it’s OK that I ask?” Dimitri seemed to consider standing straight, for a moment, but compromised on leaning against a wall. The room was a recently-occupied game room, its walls adorned in animal pelts and heads that stared blindly down at them. 

“I was weeding.” There was a fireplace with a bit of light and life left in it, Dedue crossed over to it to let the warmth radiate into him. 

“Ah, I see. That makes sense. Given the weeds and the like,” he commented, watching as Dedue set them down before the hearth for the moment. If he threw them in, wet as they were, it’d only give rise to a room for of smoke and sputtering. “Why, though?” Dedue was quiet for a moment in which he wondered how to explain it — that he couldn’t entirely explain it.

“I like that place.” That wasn’t remotely why, but was true enough. He straightened up, mulling that over as if he could turn it around and catch the light. There was something strange in trying to admit that he’d simply wanted to do it, to see it taken care of. For him to do so personally. It was, after all, just a garden; it wasn’t important that it be him, really. “It was so calm.”

“It is very nice,” Dimitri answered, his tone lifted just a little. The window next to him let through a pale light, speckling his wet face with the shadows of rain. Dimitri rubbed along his upper arms without considering it, and this caught Dedue’s attention long enough to see those vividly blue eyes landing on him for a long time. “Dedue… Was that a goal, or just something that happened? Or, rather, to be blunt...Do you have anything to do?”

“It just happened. I...was just walking.” A cautious answer that did little to deflect something wide and thoughtful in Dimitri’s gaze, resting unbroken on him. The look between them lured Dimitri out of his position by the window, let the fire win out over having something to prop him up. The season may have warmed up, but the rain was cold, and if he was still weak enough to need a place to rest, well, the rain had soaked through his scars, his clothes, the thin layers between air and bone, to the heart of that weakness. “But once I started, it was nice to imagine what it could be like. So I am fine.”

“I don’t mean to imply anything. I mean, I don’t think I do. It’s just...” Dimitri said with an expression that wished it could call itself a smile. “I worry about what sort of demands I might be making, I suppose. I don’t want to ask for too much.” He idly kicked at the bundle of weeds as he kept on going, “But besides that, it must be hard to feel secure in a strange country, after everything.”

“I have not thought about you asking me for anything. Do not worry.” He placed a hand on Dimitri’s shoulder to see if it’d warmed up at all. Still cold and wet. 

“I suppose what I’m trying to ask is more… Are you interested in spending more time there, taking care of it or things like that?” He looked up at Dedue as he settled warmly into the grip Dedue held on his shoulder. Dedue thought that there was something about the garden they’d left that matched Dimitri, just a little. “Because I’d be happy to try and ensure it says such a place. I certainly don’t think anyone would have any right to mind if you watched it, if you want.” 

When he put it like that, Dedue couldn’t help but be surprised.

“I do not know about ‘more time,’” he said. He barely knew where to start with such a big project as restoring it… Except, perhaps, to start with the flower bed whose path he’d traced. And getting access to that door. Eventually, he had to nod, a wry little smile on his lips. “Even so, I would like to see it taken care of. It could be beautiful.”

Dimitri made a faint little ‘hm,’ and turned his head back to watch the fire. 

“If you’d let me, I’d like to see that, too.”

* * *

Things were chaotic in the castle enough, with the way Rufus’ group was re-organizing to fill gaps, that it dripped down to even the groundskeepers. So there wasn’t anyone particularly interested in hearing them ask if they could borrow some gardening equipment. In the end, they’d simply agreed it would be best to use them and return them to their proper places in the storehouses. The only thing they lacked was a suitable pair of gloves for Dedue — though some were being made for him as a matter of necessity, they weren’t finished yet. It was unfortunate, but Dedue insisted he’d be fine. And so added to the possibilities for afternoons was working on restoring the garden. 

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” Dimitri asked one sunny day. So far he’d been idle, unfortunately, just watching Dedue work on resurrecting the barrier of stones between the flower bed. The garden was still a somewhat mixed state of tidy and untidy; they’d trimmed the grass, but the door (which led into what was currently a storage room for medical supplies; when he was little, it had been a spare infirmary) was still blocked off, and sorting out the plants between weeds and flowers not yet blooming was a slow process; Dedue didn’t recognize all of them… But he was still miles ahead of Dimitri, who very often tried to duck answering when his answer would have been ‘I don’t know, but it’s very pretty, isn’t it?’ And this would not stand. “I could pull up the bush, and then it would be much easier to come and go.”

“You could not pull up the bush,” said Dedue, looking at him gravely. 

“Oh, don’t be silly, of course I could. It’s not a very large bush, and I doubt it’s heavy at all.” It was sizable, about up to his chest, but it was wide rather than dense. By comparison to the things he’d regularly carried for training, it would be light as a feather. “It should be fairly simple.” 

Dedue was staring, his face becoming more and more of some sort of grimace. It spoke volumes. Dimitri couldn’t read most of them, however — only the surface level of Dedue’s skepticism, concern, puzzlement. Dimitri decided concern might be the most important, and — oh, there was something to be concerned about, wasn’t there? He smiled earnestly; it was just a basic matter to clear up.

“Oh, if you’re worried about my back, please don’t. I may not be… at my best, but I believe I can manage.”

“How could you manage?” Dedue asked, staring at him. 

“Well, my lifting form is quite good, so I don’t think I’d aggravate my back.”

“‘Lifting form.’” Dedue sighed. Dusting off his hands, he rose from his place by the flowerbed to stand by the door. “Dimitri, the thing where I guess what you mean through sound and subject only works if I believe you are making sense.”

“And why wouldn’t I be?” He didn’t entirely understand the resistance he was encountering on this. “I simply mean that I know how to lift with my knees rather than my back, for my own well-being… I just am certain of my abilities, Dedue.”

“Do not try to pull up the bush the bush.”

“You’re simply being stubborn. There really wouldn’t be a problem, I promise.”

Dedue was silent for a long time, staring downward thoughtfully. Eventually, he put a hand over his mouth and sighed again.

“Please do not pull up the bush. It can be planted again if we dig it out. Perhaps next time.” 

“Oh, I think you’ve got a good point there. I yield to your expertise on the matter.” He cleared his throat. Dimitri felt a little wave of disappointment welling up in him; he should have known it wouldn’t be that simple. He was just tired of feeling like an invalid — His body was still echoing with everything that had happened, dragging him into an inescapable whirlpool. And so he’d spoken rashly. “I’m sorry if that was a silly thing to suggest.”

“Hm.” Dedue turned back to what he’d been doing. “I think we can finish the weeding today… Perhaps you could help me sort things out.” Which wasn’t a real job, but he could see the concession Dedue was trying to make in offering it. He nodded and they both went back to the beds, where Dedue leaned over it to continue wading through what must have been almost a decade of wild plants.

“I’m surprised you don’t simply uproot the whole thing and start over, honestly. It feels as if it would take less time.” Dimitri didn’t know anything about plants, but he could understand that much.

“It would. However, it would not be right.” Dedue sounded pensive as he searched out something that seemed definitively weedy — but those had been taken care of already. Dimitri had tried to prepare a little once he’d understood how in the weeds, metaphorically, his being in the weeds, literally, left him: last night, he’d flipped through a botanical book. He’d had nothing better to do; he couldn’t sleep. There’d been an illustration of one of the plants there with ragged-looking leaves; some kind of thistle, perhaps? It was apparently a weed originally from Albinea. He pointed to it, and Dedue reached for a small spade. “These plants have worked hard on their own...I am sure that sounds strange.” He broke off with a sigh, a hint of color tingeing his cheeks darker and warmer. So Dedue was embarrassed over sounding silly sometimes, too? Dimitri just smiled and shook his head. 

“I don’t think so at all.” Dimitri tried to relax and lean over to see Dedue’s efforts more clearly — but the moment he curved his back, the skin around his injuries, still shiny and puckered and red, pulled painfully as they stretched. It felt like he’d jerked against the end of a tether. He winced, grunting in his teeth, and sat back. Dedue’s worried eyes watched him. Dimitri tried to wave it off. “Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’d rather like to hear the rest.”

“They planted themselves and grew themselves. Some of them are still catching up to plants that had better care. But these flowers survived.” Dedue turned his head slowly back towards the garden. One hand brushed gently up against a stem, atop which was a bud. His callused fingertips moved up the stem and to the bud, unpressured and unpressuring, feeling the smooth, glossy stem and the fuzzy-looking sepals that shielded the faint hint of bright blue petal. It was a touch with a real, resounding gentleness to it, moving slowly as light underwater. The expression on Dedue’s face had traces of severity, but those were just in the shape of him — where Dimitri looked, he thought he saw a warm wistfulness. “I would like to support that effort while their season lasts.”

“You really do care for even a few wildflowers, don’t you?” Dimitri gave voice to what he was wondering. He’d offered Dedue the chance to take care of it just from gauging Dedue’s own reactions, feeling his way around a need Dedue himself didn’t seem to entirely acknowledge – or wouldn’t admit to to Dimitri, at least; it was heartening to see Dedue's feelings about it.

“Well. I suppose so,” Dedue admitted shyly, tugging a smile up out of Dimitri’s heart. “There is also a more practical reason.”

“Oh?”

“I am not sure of Faerghus plants or weather, and summer has begun. The time to plant has passed. While cuttings are possible, anything I add might die before getting to bloom.” He looked down, a sliver of his lip tucked into his mouth. “...I do not want to be wrong. So I would like to wait, and learn more for the next year.” 

This comment gave Dimitri a long pause. The words sunk in slowly. He let loose a puffy sigh, staring up into the sky. He didn’t know how to word what was in his heart, only that it was a thousand pounds of feathers, diffuse and sad and so heavy that it seemed impossible. Dedue was right, and that came rippling through him like a stone tossed into a pond.

“There’s going to be a next year, isn’t there?” He asked in a voice soft and wondering and crushed under the weight. Sometimes each day was a mountain he had no choice but to climb; it was hard to imagine 365 of them. It was hard to imagine the existence of something like a future where he didn’t simply die, too, even when he  _ needed _ to imagine it. Now, he didn’t need to — it still left him feeling winded. But slightly awed, too, like witnessing some unthinkable magic, summoning something from what looked like nothing.

“I … think so. If I am with you, I think I will still be somewhere then.” Dedue’s tone was more or less the same, uncertainly extending out. He narrowed his eyes, staring sternly down at the upturned earth where the thistle had been, and patted his trowel against it in a brief rhythm. “I have to plant new seeds at some time, so... there must be.”

It rose through the flowers on their long stems, which swayed ever so slightly from the air’s faint flow. Dimitri nodded slowly, letting his breath go to join those words. It was almost a lament, almost a prayer, offered to something that felt as unstable as wind.  _ There must be. _

* * *

Dimitri headed to the garden from the gates. He’d had one last time to try and convince his uncle to see reason before he rode out — but it hadn’t been enough. Oh, he’d tried his best to keep his head. But his uncle had told him he was only confused. He heard it again and again and again, and he didn’t understand it and he couldn’t take it and that meant he kept failing. He didn’t know how he was going to face Dedue. In the two days since that ill-fated meeting with his uncle and the rest of the hastily-cobbled regency council, Dimitri was having trouble with that. It was understandable that Dedue would be upset at Dimitri, at who he was, at how powerless he still was. It was completely reasonable. Dimitri was upset at Dimitri, too. Everyone was, because they should be. But he didn’t entirely know what to do about that, save that he must accept it as a fair judgement, with dignity and honor.

He had no idea how that translated to saying hello as he walked through the disused infirmary, save that he stiffly carried his head up, whatever was tired beneath it. He cautiously began to open the door, and met no resistance. So the bush was gone. Dedue turned his head when he exited, alerted by the creak. He was standing beside a shovel plunged into the earth, standing beside the bush which was now a slight ways from the door.

Dimitri shook his head when their eyes met. Dedue squared his shoulders and nodded solemnly. Dimitri drew nearer, quietly, and ran his hand over the top of the bush’s whippy form. Its branches fanned out more now they were no longer so compressed — though he saw the way that growing against that door had warped it, changed it, made a section of thin branches grow straight up at hard angles.

“So, you replanted it.” Dimitri broke the silence. 

“Yes. I had the time.” 

“You’ve really been working hard on this.” The tension in the air loosened just a little at the mundane subject.

“There’s still more to do,” he said softly, looking out over the bed. It was still unquestionably disorganized, still more meadow than garden. But they stood clearly, an array of shapes and sizes, building up towards the back, where the roses grew wild over the walls. Little lady’s-mantles with their bright yellow-green bud and symmetrical clusters of leaves crowded low, little asters at all sorts of heights, fireweed in warmer shades sending up the last of their red-violet flowers, and poppies up high. The poppies were in bloom now, bright, crisp blue that mirrored the sky above them. “The flowers may need more water than I thought. The bush surely needs some.”

He turned his attention to a watering can he’d put by the wall when he hadn’t been using it, while Dimitri stood back a moment and watched him attend to it. Dedue quietly crouched beside the plant so the water from the can fell directly onto the soil, hitting it in a rain-like spattering. Once some of the water had sunk in, Dedue’s brow furrowed.

“Maybe this will be enough. I will have to wait and see. Plants that have been… replanted,” It sounded like he was trying it out, after Dimitri had said it earlier. Dimitri gave him a little nod, and so he continued, “Need more care and water.”

“Really? Well, now that you mention it, I suppose that makes a lot of sense.” He looked down at the plant, watching the sunlight scatter its way over the green and white streaked leaves. Of course, it had only been moved a few feet, but time would tell. He found his eyes drifted to something else that had been replanted, demanded to grow in foreign soil. From above, he could see a softness to Dedue’s face that the view from below tended to compress and strip out. The bits of fringe not caught by his ponytail left thin, lacy shadows on his face. “Still, I can tell how much you care about all of this. I think it’ll be alright.”

“I am not sure I did much for them.” Dedue scoffed, but sadly. He clenched his hands together and hefted his shoulders once, a sort of helpless shrug. “I do not really know what I am doing with much of this.”

“You might have fooled me.” It wasn’t quite what he’d intended, to see Dedue so unsure, so he tried to keep his tone light.

“I mostly did what my mother told me in the past.” Dedue’s words were almost inaudible. They stirred the leaves of the bush, and that was all. He nodded at it, resolved. “I simply want to see this garden do well.”

Dimitri turned his head, looking for something easier, lighter. What greeted him were the flowers on display, pops of color that would probably start to fade soon. But for now, the way they bloomed was in part because someone was watching over them now. Even if they would have bloomed on their own, that was still true. 

“Perhaps we should bring some flowers back, as a reminder of your hard effort. For your room, perhaps.” Part of him was aware he was just talking as his mind spun around under him, but he threw out a suggestion almost in a similar vein to suggesting the whole project. “Is that alright?”

“I am not sure. I do not know if I would want to take from it.” Dedue turned his head away from the bush and towards the garden itself, a cool and steady stare that made Dimitri worried about Dedue. Who could just stay standing in the rain for loneliness and lack, lost in thoughts, solitary as a mountain top, lost as a wind. Dimitri’s own thoughts hurried through his stomach, fluttering like whirring dragonflies. 

“I —” Dimitri paused, glanced away. It was hard to name what he really wanted; it came out that he wanted Dedue to call this garden his, to take something here for himself. So it came out clumsily, incomplete. Traces of anxiety ran through him. “It’s yours, before it’s anyone’s. If you want it, of course. After all, you’re the one to whom it really matters, aren’t you?” 

Dedue didn’t immediately answer, but instead he briefly looked over the lady’s mantles, pausing as he stopped before a cluster of those pale blue poppies. 

“I do like...this one. I have not seen a poppy this color before.” 

“It's a local flower, I believe. I'm not sure if they grow anywhere else, but visitors always remark on them.” Faerghus normally loved a deeper blue than this one, which went bright and vivid where the light fell through the almost translucent petals. 

“I see.” Dedue stroked a petal, running around its outer edge like the rim of a cup. He stared at it for such a long time. His hair, resting in a low, loose ponytail wet with sweat from the back of his neck, gleamed as the sunlight splayed itself across his stiff shoulders and upright back. Dimitri couldn’t tell what was in his tone — something quiet and muted, more like the exposed soil than like the flowers growing out of it, graced with hints of shadow and patches of cool softness. He sounded cautious. “I might like to get the seeds to grow more. They are very… nice.” 

“Dedue…” Dimitri’s lips parted, slightly awed, and just that little noise came out. It wasn’t the rush of questions that bubbled in his heart. Was it OK? Had he managed to give Dedue something, anything, besides his own incessant demands? A place for Dedue himself, whoever he really was? He wanted to believe Dedue could have it in this, in all the little things he tried to think of: a place where he could plant proof and promise of a future. Dimitri knew that wasn’t something you could really give someone, wasn’t a  _ thing  _ at all, of course he knew, but – had he? 

“...Of course. For next year,” is what he said instead, for Dedue to take or leave as he wished. “If you’d like to see them then.”

Dedue made a little affirming  _ hm _ as his hand moved down the poppy’s stem until it reached a juncture. With a grunt, he pressed into the stem at an angle, cutting into it with his thumbnail to help pick it loose. When he turned back to Dimitri, he was relaxed, his shoulders softly rounded, his brow loose, his movements steady and even. In silence, he lifted the poppy until it was just an inch from Dimitri’s face. The vivid yellow-gold anthers around its heart trembled from the motion, vanishing in and out of the wavering petals. He looked past it, a bemused expression rising to his face, to see Dedue shift away from grave and thoughtful. Dedue was smiling. 

“I was right,” he said. Dimitri’s hand slowly reached to take the flower held towards him. The smile was at the corners of Dedue’s mouth, relaxed and quiet; it reached up into his eyes: so radiant, a cool grey-green ocean lit by the summer sun, and lit from somewhere deep within as their corners softened, folded in on one another tenderly. And Dedue concluded, his tone soft and warm, “They match.”

Dimitri stared at him for a long time, his own expression fallen away helplessly. He didn’t want to say anything — he wanted to hold that answer, whatever it was, that had deposited itself gently in his trembling hand. He wanted to hold the sensation he was standing on the bluffs, looking out over a distant and shining sea on a perfectly cloudless day: the poppy like a billowing blue sky, and Dedue’s smiling eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: H is for Ha-ha, I Finally Get To Do H is for Hair!


	8. H is for Hair

Dimitri still found it a little hard to get up in the morning. The day was an overwhelming burden, a weight resting on his chest until it stole his breath away. The sunlight streaming through his bedroom curtains ached in his bones. He shut his eyes tightly to try and block out the light, partially aware the effort pushed him more and more into being awake. Surely, for five more minutes, there were no still slowly-healing injuries that stung when he moved; for five minutes there was no emptiness; for five minutes, no one had to be left behind; for five minutes, everyone could live.

No, though, the illusion a few hours of uninterrupted sleep had given him was gone now. A string of knocks reached his door. The first knock, fairly hard; the next two, sheepishly low. It’s a pattern Dimitri had gotten used to. Honestly, it reminded him of his own knocks, except he wasn’t  _ actually very good _ at correcting for a quieter knock. Dimitri took a few deep breaths, each one drawing in it the need to get up; he couldn’t afford to just lie in bed anymore. It didn’t actually help, anyway. The third breath in, he pulled himself out of bed, feeling his body complain. It was worse than training stiffness; hardly seemed fair, that. 

“You can come in!” He shouted through his bedroom door, out into the sitting room. He heard the door open, and Dedue step in, he said through the doorway, “I’m very sorry, but I still need to get dressed. I’ll only be a moment.”

Dimitri thought he heard the noise of him settling into a chair like a little sigh of relief. Dimitri paused before his wardrobe before he selected something for the day, without considering it too deeply; the pause was for his peace of mind. White shirt, one with minimal accents that were bothersome. Slate-grey trousers. No cape, it wasn’t cold enough; he hadn’t even bothered with poking the embers – though, now that his eyes fell on the fireplace, it was more that he’d forgotten. He ran his hands over a little blue ribbon and draped it halfheartedly around his collar. He didn’t really mess with the knot, but sighed and considered himself decently prepared for the day. That was about enough. 

“I’m sorry for taking so long,” he said as he stepped out into the sitting room. Dedue nodded in greeting, but his eyes narrowed with a suspicion that gave Dimitri a moment’s pause. “Is something wrong?”

“How can you see?” Dedue crossed over to Dimitri. Who blinked, puzzled, at the question. Dedue’s hand reached out and brushed against Dimitri’s bangs, lifting the messy fringe...Now that Dedue mentioned it, out of his eyes. The strands flicked out of his vision. 

“That doesn’t seem necessary. It was fine.” Well, it was in his face a little, but he’d hardly noticed it; his hair was hardly a curtain, if you asked him. 

“It is better now,” he insisted. He loomed over Dimitri to scan the entire top of his head at once. “When was the last time you took care of it?” 

The question wiped away any spontaneously arising complaint about unfair use of superior heights, casting it into a void. When  _ was _ the last time? He had definitely washed and brushed on the day of Dedue’s slightly complicated commendation. And that had been...A week or two, now. There must have been a space between that and now, certainly? Dimitri ran through his mental calendar, trying to place fragments of days into specific order.

He shrugged. What he’d done yesterday and what in the days before was more a tangle than his hair was. Little moments, ordinary moments, came and blurred together. 

“Does it really matter, Dedue?” Shoulders slid slumped as he asked the silly question “It only slipped my mind, is all.”

“It ‘slips your mind’ often.” Dedue almost certainly didn’t mean it as an accusation, but it felt like one of Dimitri’s efforts at play jabs – not meaning to be hard, hard enough to bruise anyway. Dimitri looked away.

“It... hardly seems worth the bother. I suppose. Perhaps it ought; it is just another piece of routine, and hardly onerous or unusual, so rather than perhaps, it really ought to… but I can’t say it does.” Falling asleep and waking up the next morning was hard enough most days; it was a shame that would never be enough. It was important for a prince to always be composed, to always look prepared, to always satisfy the eyes on him. A part of him knew that, cared about that immensely. A part of him just couldn’t carry that weight; it didn’t feel worth carrying. “I don’t know why.”

He really didn’t. 

“Let me,” Dedue said, reaching across the gap towards Dimitri’s tousled golden mane. Dimitri momentarily bristled, his shoulders jerking. Dedue froze an inch from the top of his head, so close Dimitri could feel the heat of his hand. It was not unpleasant. “Is it wrong?”

“Ah, well.” He shrugged. He didn’t think it would help, but it’d at least let him be presentable, and that would make things… not worse, anyway. “I suppose not, if it’s not too much of a bother for you today. It’s just an unusual offer.” Oddly, it didn’t quite insult his pride, though. Perhaps because he knew he needed it. Perhaps because he couldn’t explain why he hadn’t acted on that need. Best to hand it over so he didn’t have to. “I thank you for it all the same, however.”

Dimitri showed Dedue to the vanity with his washbasin and other personal supplies, including the sturdiest brush money could buy. Dedue tapped the line of steel inlaid into the wood handle, ringing out a  _ clink _ with his knuckle. He gave Dimitri a  _ look _ , but all Dimitri could do was shrug. He usually did brush his own hair -- he wasn’t a baby, after all -- and that meant he had needs in the hairbrush department.

“Sit,” Dedue motioned him toward a chair. In the polished mirror, Dimitri flashed one of his practiced smiles, his prince-befitting smiles. He could almost recognize the person in the mirror as the boy he’d grown up as – the same face, grown back into itself. The same features, fair and cute. But its smile wasn’t the same smile he’d practiced for special occasions, the one meant to fill emptiness and tamp down loneliness or anxiety. It seemed so far-away.

He felt Dedue’s hands get to work, pulling him out of his thoughts. They rested stretches of hair onto his palm and running a brush smoothly through it, starting from the base. Dedue’s hand was warm, and the rhythm of the brush, its soft swish through Dimitri’s golden hair like wind through the trees, was long and slow and deep. Even a tangle might have just been a little tug, shielded in Dedue’s palm. The weight fell off of Dimitri’s shoulders. In a luxurious silence, Dimitri sighed, his breathing following that  _ swish….swish...swish… _ of the brush, the slow motion of that warm hand closer to the side of his head as it climbed up besides his ear. The morning sunlight streaked through his windows, basking alongside them and soaking the fur rug at his feet in a pleasant warmth. His eyelids briefly drooped. 

“I think at this rate, I’m going to fall asleep,” he said pleasantly, the words themselves driving off some of the drowsiness.

“You would fall off the chair… But then, that may not be so bad.” Maybe it was just the atmosphere, but there was a bit of springiness, like a soft loam, in Dedue’s deadpan response. “It is better for you.”

“Better for me to fall out of my chair?” he pressed a hand to his chest in a sort of mock-indignation. “I’m surprised at you. However, I’d most likely just slump forward, so I doubt that would go as you imagine.”

“I see.” Dedue’s eyes flicked down to spot Dimitri’s reflection, and give it...Was that a smile? Yes, it was, good. He hoped it was good.

“I’ll have you know, I expect to be caught if I fall out of a chair,” he said, teasing to go along with the moment while Dedue’s hands continued to move towards the back of his head. “But for slumping forward, I can manage for myself.”

“Understood, Dimitri. And if you were to rest against the back?” Dedue took a brief pause to tap the back of the chair, the little pressure banging through the wood so Dimitri felt it close between his shoulder blades.

“We’ll leave that to the chair, then.” Dimitri paused. The silence stretched itself out, and the chuckle that he let out had a slightly uneasy quality. He didn’t tease people often, and as a result, when he did, people had the unfortunate tendency not to recognize it. “You’re aware I’m only teasing you, right, Dedue?” 

“I guessed you were not serious,” Dedue answered with a satisfied little puff of breath. “And I am not, either. But I do not mind if you sleep a little more. Should I come later tomorrow?”

“No, no. I really should get up earlier myself.” He needed a normal schedule. He did. More at ease, Dimitri let the silence stretch out like a cat around them. It had a nostalgic quality to it. “You really are very good at this, though.”

“You … do not need to praise the least thing I do.” Dedue’s tone had resumed full seriousness, his eyes darting away in the mirror even as his lips kept that little upwards twist, a shy smile that broke up his angles with a gentle little curve. 

“Why not? I honestly am impressed, you know. There are… a lot of things that I’m much too clumsy for. Even though I try my best, there’s much I lack, and few things I’m really good for.” He sighed, shaking his head rather than dwelling on the fact that he wasn’t sure he could do something like brush someone’s hair, or take care of a plant, or cook something more complex than roasting something he’d caught with Gustave. “I don’t want to burn up with envy or selfishness. I’d much rather look at all the things you really can do well and be amazed. Even little things like this are truly worth remarking on, or else why would you work so hard on them?”

Dedue’s mouth opened and then closed down hard. His cheeks brightened as he lifted his head high, eyes wide and slightly staring at the mirror reflection of Dimitri’s face. He’d overdone it, hadn’t he?

“Ah, well, that might be… Exaggerating, I suppose, I just…” Dimitri turned his head to the side, pulling out his hair from Dedue’s fingers. “Well, I do mean it, but…”

“I have not thought about it. I only…” He lifted his head. He spoke slowly, even by Dedue’s halting standards, thinking carefully. “I learned things that made people happy, that is all.”

“You see, I think that’s admirable,” Dimitri insisted, because that wasn’t some sort of argument  _ against _ praising Dedue, not in the slightest. Dedue shrugged helplessly, overcome. He continued his smooth motions, eyes dipping to meet only Dimitri’s hair.

“I brushed her hair. Celi... my sister, I mean, when she was younger,” Dedue said, low and thoughtful. His expression had retreated into unreadability. Dimitri’s heart sank. His poor sister. Dedue treated the subject like a broken leg, keeping the weight off. And that could only speak to how deeply it hurt. He spent a long moment in worried silence, trying to find the right thing to say. 

“She must have appreciated that,” he tried, his voice not at all disguising that it was something hard. “I’ve often wondered what having a sibling is like. I have...had...friends who were like older brothers to me, and many of my friends have siblings.” His tone slipped a little on the tense, as his mind hit the gap between Glenn alive and Glenn dead.There was still Sylvain, of course, though he was an odd older brother. Wait. Sylvain. His birthday had been at the start of Garland Moon… Which was now very nearly spent. Time had stopped working, and so he’d have to send a letter of apology. After all, with all the unrest, Sylvain likely had to spend it with his family alone. Thinking of  _ that _ added something else to his pensive mood, a thing he could not name for a situation he couldn’t name. “It seems sometimes a mixed thing.”

“No siblings always get along. We also fought.” Dedue huffed, the noise somewhere between a laugh and the break that comes with a sob. He was not crying – he was not misty-eyed. But he looked unsure, a muddled feeling folding the corners of his eyes. “She was full of energy, and so, to tease her was not hard.”

“I see,” Dimitri said, his smile equally ambivalent at this warm image of something that now could never be regained. “Still, she must have loved you. Even with the teasing.”

Dedue nodded, and returned to that same smooth, even motion, neither faster nor slower, but somehow far away.

* * *

“I hope her spirit is at peace.” Dedue said, the thought emerging so spontaneously that it would have bitten Dedue if it were a snake. When people died, something of them surely must have lived on, somewhere. A presence, perhaps, tracing the lines of their lives, whether here or returned to the earth. Maybe he’d been lucky: he’d gone far enough away he only saw them in glimpses. He could keep his composure. He sighed, settling into brushing Dimitri’s hair. That probably wasn’t really all that true, on any count. 

“At peace? She must have died a truly horrible death. With so much undone, so much regret...” Dimitri went very still, his expression collapsing darkly. Dedue shut his eyes, trying not to think too hard about their fates. He knew what Dimitri meant, and he may have been right. There were things the living and the dead wanted. And it hurt to put into words why he felt Dimitri needed to be wrong, despite all of that. 

“...I would hope,” Dedue said, a lump rising to bob at the edge of his voice, “That she would be glad that I am safe. That they all would.”

“Are they, your family...So easily satisfied?” Dimitri’s face was a warped, strained expression, a grimace he held briefly. Dedue took a pause, held a second of silence for himself. It was something he didn’t entirely know how to put into words, something that wafted in him, just every now and again, the way the curtains stirred in the breeze. And he hoped it was enough.

“I think I can find happiness.” He was not always sure of it, in truth – but now, more and more, he felt it was possible. He might not be there yet, but in fleeting breaths, it was  _ possible _ . He didn’t have to be idle or alone. He had something he could believe in, and the life it gave him could be useful, worthwhile. Even that would have been enough to live with in a way he’d known back then that he could not, would not, live without. But his little corner of the castle’s garden began to burst into color under his touch, as another garden had. There were long stretches before mealtimes spent soaking in the wafting scent of spices again, the familiar pop and bubble of fat over fire. And every so often, like a fish in the shallows of a sunlit pond, he got to glimpse the happiness of someone incredible. “...And once I thought it to be impossible.”

Ah, there it was, the flash of golden scales; Dimitri had tilted his head up, to watch Dedue’s face as he spoke, and at what he saw there in Dedue’s warm and tender expression, a real smile flowed into his features. His hair drifted like sunbeams through Dedue’s fingers as he moved. 

“...I see.” Dimitri said, over a strange flutter in Dedue’s heartbeat. That smile alighted on Dedue like a butterfly taking in the warmth. Dimitri hesitated a moment before adding, his voice soft, “You may leave their regrets to me, and have that… I’m glad for you as well, Dedue.” 

“Plea-please hold still.” Dedue’s voice cracked in a way it hadn’t in some time now as he scrambled for the right thing to say when he was put before that face making those words with its mouth.

“Oh, I’m very sorry,” said Dimitri, looking ahead once more. Dedue’s hands continued, perhaps a little faster than before, the work of managing the prince’s hair. How some of it had ended just caught in a little arc, caught by his ear, he didn’t know. It was lighter than Celi’s silver hair, weighed down by length, often brushed wet when it tangled less. He could feel that weight, a little, and didn’t necessarily mind it. He completed the circle of de-tangling, switching to a lighter comb to busy his hands and fix Dimitri's wild part. With metal inlayed along the tines. It was well-done, if he had to judge, and he did that rather than think about whether he was happy, or could be happy, or if Dimitri was happy for his happiness, or what sort of happiness was embedded in that smile. But this was a very odd trend in Dimitri’s personal effects – he hadn’t noticed its like elsewhere in the castle, so it was not a Fodlan thing. Perhaps Dimitri just had an eye for metalworking; he had a lot of weapons around, some of truly beautiful craftsmanship. The thought was encouraging enough that Dedue’s heart settled back into place. 

When it did, it eased a wistful sigh out of him. This was a silly path to have gone down, from the very beginning, one that pushed him around like a leaf on the wind. 

“I do not know why I have said any of this.” Still, if there was rue in his smile, it was still alive in the sleepy warmth of morning. It made the feelings in him light and heavy at once, stirred up by the little flutter at that smile and the palpably real memory of braiding his sister’s long hair. In a strange way, they blended together.

“Do you need to have a reason?” Dimitri sounded honestly surprised when he asked that, but then he glanced away. “Well, I suppose it’s not normally what you’d do. But isn’t remembering your loved ones important, when the mood strikes?”

“It does not do anything.” He didn’t know why it felt like this today, or where the feeling would go tomorrow. The last of Dimitri’s hair fell into place, bangs falling aside to frame his face in gold. Dedue didn’t know how to fix the world spinning wildly out of control, to anchor the sense of his own choice to live ready to slip through his fingers if he let it. But Dimitri could have neat hair; he’d done something about that.

“You love her, though, don’t you?” Dimitri examined himself as Dedue stepped back. The response was such an odd question that Dedue tilted his head noncommittally. Dimitri cleared his throat. “Well, forgive my impudence, but… I can’t imagine remembering those you love, or wanting them to be at peace, wherever they might be, is purposeless… I cannot believe that wanting someone’s happiness is ever a waste.”

The fine hair didn’t stay in place; they were light as cloud, fluffing up when he moved. As he turned his head, it formed a golden nimbus, hanging a shadow behind his movements as he assessed Dedue’s handiwork. A sheepish little smile crept with a rosy dawn across his face as he turned to face Dedue. The hair settled around him, drifting down like feathers on the wind.

Seeing him now, not the mirrored reflection or the back of his head, but that bright gold shimmer, Dedue felt like he, too, had come down gently to rest.

“I think it’s important. I think it’s good, Dedue,” Dimitri said, about either wishing for happiness or Dedue’s efforts – in the end, they were both chances to put those memories into Dedue’s hands, where maybe they could still  _ do _ something; the morning’s quiet would fade, but here, he’d held something together out of the swish of a hairbrush and the disconnected moments of gold and silver. Something soft and downy and restful. It was a moment where he was sure he was right: he could be happy sometimes, too. A smile filled his eyes.

“...Perhaps.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got stuck in my head early in planning after seeing this lovely image; all of their Dedue/Dimidue artwork is fantastic! https://asurth.tumblr.com/post/187007716555
> 
> Next Time: I is the loneliest roman numeral you'll ever do... It's also for Isolation.


	9. I is for Isolation

The rain outside made the castle feel like an island, like it was simply the only place in the world – and if that were so, then the pitter-patter that filled the silence that was blossoming slowly around Dimitri, a little wider and a little deeper each day, reminded Dimitri that he was alone even within that. The only counterpoint was the rhythm of Dedue’s footsteps beside him as they headed towards dinner.

The absence of so many tutors – or, in some cases, only their lessons – left holes in Dimitri’s afternoons, gaps that had originally been for resting and healing, but now? Now they were just gaps. His language tutor was dead, because it was natural that they had brought a fluent speaker of Duscur with them. Gustave, it seemed, still didn’t think him ready enough. Gone from the halls were most of the familiar guardsmen who spoke kindly to him in return – the chorus, if he tried, was a stiff “Greetings, Your Highness.” The new maids (and there were more new maids and female staff than male ones, a pattern Dimitri could see but didn’t know what to do with) bowed indifferently as they walked into the great hall, without looking him in the eye. 

The great hall’s high, arched windows threw in grey light from what must have been a late sunset, stifled under the waves of clouds. People had gathered around tables with their voices barely breaking through the curtains of noise made by the rain. The court was different now – quieter, for one, with his uncle gone and only a few of its regulars waiting for their new regent’s return. There wasn’t anyone important enough to help him – but more than that, gone, too, was the chance to be a part of important conversations that were sometimes held in this room. Gone were the men and women, his father’s friends or visiting guests – scattered, he supposed now, but some lingered on the edges of rooms with their piteous glances – who might call him close to some talk they were having with the king. An invitation would have Dimitri swept to his father’s side with an arm around his shoulders. Or he himself would reach for his father’s hand to say he was listening, if it extended towards him just an inch. He might have been cuffed playfully by the ear as if to say ‘listen closely now.’ He naturally had never expected such a thing from his uncle; they had never gotten along. But sometimes, when his uncle had been here and there were important things to say, he felt the absence like a hard stone. 

No matter how much he wanted someone to listen, they did not, and that he was too young to be respected meant people were dying, meant Dedue was looked at so coldly that Dimitri sometimes thought it was better if no one paid any attention to either of them. But he kept expecting someone to say he needed to be doing something, he needed to go somewhere, or at least go play with whoever was available! Well, no one he was familiar with was available, for one. There were other people his and Dedue’s age in the castle, of course, new staff and courtiers with new families, and Dimitri was always willing to make a new friend. Until he saw the gaps he’d need to bridge, the smiles he’d need to force, the happiness he’d expect and would find hollow, the cheer he would have to pretend until eventually they believed him. And so, he didn’t.

They found the end of the table that was more or less theirs; even when the table was nearly full, it managed somehow to have a few empty spots around them. But Dimitri had been too lost in his own thoughts, hadn’t noticed the change in the handfuls of people until he stopped.

People clustered around Dimitri – fellow diners at the high table, there on invitation of the absent regent. One of them, a tall woman with eyes the gold of a hawk’s, had her hand on the chair Dimitri usually sat in, since the table had stopped being his father’s table, since the time the chair next to it had become essentially Dedue’s seat. 

“You must be lonely, your highness, with your uncle fighting to avenge his late majesty,” she told him. “You should come sit in your rightful place.”

Dimitri did not know how to answer her. His uncle being absent had nothing to do with it, but she must have spoken with the regent enough – he was always laughing at her jokes – to know that.

“Quite so, Lady Barry is quite right,” added a man from Uncle Rufus’ council, Lord Arsene, dressed in gold-trimmed clothes that shone against dark fabrics and indigo hair. The man had joined in with people calling him  _ confused  _ before; he just wrapped it in gentle tones _ . _ “Come, sit with good company at the head of the table. Why, I have a daughter just about your age that I’d love to talk to you about, Your Highness.”

“Ahhh… That won’t be necessary. I have Dedue to sit with…” He answered slowly. Dedue, standing next to his chair, made a gap in the cluster of people that was larger than his gangly form. “Thank you for asking.” 

“Oh, Your Highness, how...generous,” Lady Barry attempted, letting her eyes briefly flick past Dedue. “How gracious of His Highness to want to keep his servant from feeling so intimidated by his betters.” 

“Wouldn’t Your Highness prefer, however, some company with whom you can have easy conversation for an evening?” suggested Arsene, his words overlapping with hers. “It must be difficult; I doubt his Fodlani is to the standards Your Highness is used to.”

Dimitri’s eyes flicked over to Dedue, checking to see if he was going to respond to that. Dedue was looking forward fixedly – not at him, or at the group of people who shared a small chuckle, but just  _ forward _ , ever onward, beyond the far wall. His shoulders were like rocks. So, Dimitri would need to say something.

“Dedue’s Fodlani is excellent; if you assume otherwise, it’s your own ignorance.” He felt like a piece of flint being struck, things sparking up in him in jolts.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.. I admit I’ve had little opportunity to have his acquaintance,” said the man who’d been at this table every night since his arrival in Rufus’ train. “But it must be stressful for him, having to always speak a foreign tongue. Wouldn’t it be a relief for the both of you if he had the night off… And you had the company of those who better understand the burdens of your position, Your Highness?”

He couldn’t answer all of this on Dedue’s behalf, not when it was a question of Dedue’s feelings, could he? But an answer didn’t come – not in words, at least, but in the silence Dedue had cultivated with resolve, withdrawn into himself like a tortoise. His eyes shifted, wide and full of nerves behind his frozen face, to glance down at Dimitri. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing, his eyes said – he didn’t want their attention on him. Truly, it was a shared sentiment. Some noble’s hand reached out to grab Dimitri’s, and even though Dimitri didn’t take it, it still felt like it was groping for him. Dimitri pressed his hands tightly together, until his fingers strained against each other.

“I can’t,” Dimitri felt like he had to say something, “say what Dedue would prefer, but that’s not for you, either!”

“I do not mind,” Dedue muttered quicker after that, even through what seemed a considerable struggle over how to word it politely.

“So I would rather not leave him alone here.” Dimitri said decisively. “As he would be. I don’t want that!”

“It’s degrading for a Prince of Faerghus to concern himself overmuch like this, Your Highness. It’s best to leave things in their place.” Barry’s eyes were fixed on him like a hawk diving down for a mouse in the field, her smile with the curve of a grasping talon. Their place! Their place! Dimitri’s hands shook, his teeth dug into the inside of his lip. Place! 

“What is this?” asked a voice from – oh, somewhere, quieter and in the back. Dimitri couldn’t see who was saying what. “Is something wrong with His Highness?”

“He’s just getting a little heated. Your Highness, it’s OK. You simply need to be calm and sensible,” said Arsene, in a way that reminded Dimitri of nothing so much as the way they’d all agreed that he had simply been too stunned by the horrors to recall the truth of what he had seen. It made Dimitri feel breathless and caged to remember the meeting. “I understand we’ve been… hasty in our judgments, but we’re not trying to pressure or offend you, Your Highness.”

_ Is that true?  _ He didn’t remember how this man had responded to him breaking the table at the conference meeting. It was true they didn’t like Dedue, though. He was sure of that, and he couldn’t respect them for it. But what of him?

“Of course not. We’re simply speaking from concern, Your Highness. There’s no need to be so uneasy. We won’t be strangers if you talk with us. We’d like to be your allies.” 

_ Is that true? _ He didn’t entirely remember breaking the table.What were they thinking of him? Was this use or was this callousness or was this foolishness – or was this pity? This wasn’t. This wasn’t how he’d normally respond, normally feel, even if he did not like them. It had to look very strange. 

“Your Highness –”

_ Is that? _ He only remembered the eyes everywhere. Dimitri felt a hand reach for him as a sudden burst of chill raced from his shoulder to his spine. It was just a hand; Dimitri’s world had contracted in to that point. He forced down a shudder.

No one had wanted to be his allies then, not when he’d had something to say. 

“I think,” came his voice from somewhere far away, “That I am not hungry. I wish you all a good meal, but I am going to my rooms.”

He didn’t look back – he could feel the eyes strike him, he could hear a muffled rise of “Your Highness” out behind him. He hurried room without considering the movement, passing a confused head server with a platter in his arms; footsteps behind him; other voices in almost a chorus, dotting out through the halls, a forest of “Your Highness?”; the footsteps were beside him; he wished their words could mean something; he grabbed the doorknob, entered the room, sat down in a chair, and sank.

“Dimitri.” Dedue’s voice, his concern hard and not without frustration. Even so, the sound of his name was soothing. “Are you well?”

“I’ll be fine...Trying to argue that I’m lonely, and I should sit with them...” Dimitri shook his head, still shutting his eyes tightly around a hollow feeling in his gut. “When I see people acting so foolishly in hope I’ll, oh, I don’t know, grant them my favor as well as my uncle’s – as if something like that would win me! … I feel lonelier.”

“They were wrong.” Dedue didn’t settle down exactly; when Dimitri opened his eyes, he was still standing, arms behind his back. The faint twitch of his shoulders suggested his hands were working around one another, an uneasy fidget kept out of public view. Dimitri felt like kicking himself. He’d gotten carried away thinking about himself. 

“Are you alright, Dedue?” He asked. Dedue turned his head, eyes narrowing thoughtfully before concluding with a nod.

“I don’t want to listen to them,” he admitted still, expression dark. “But… I was surprised, too, at first. That you left such a high place to sit by me.” Dedue crossed the room in silence, parting the curtains to let in the faint, distant glow of a summer sunset. The extra light hit the room and tinged it warmly. 

“I don’t worry about things like that. You were being left all alone, so it didn’t need to be more complicated than that.” Didn’t need to, Dimitri knew, but was, because of the title that swaddled him sometimes. He tried to shake off the feeling, and didn’t entirely succeed. He folded his arms around him, trying not to look like he was trying to squeeze the feeling back into himself, for all that he was. Carefully, carefully -- but with enough force that it still hurt a little, not unpleasantly. “Even if they weren’t being unkind to you, I wouldn’t really want to sit with anyone who wants me at the head of the table simply because I’m the prince.” 

“Why?” Dedue asked, turning his head to glance back at Dimitri, who still hadn’t begun to move again properly. The light blazed around the outline of his head, catching a look, perhaps puzzled, perhaps tired, in his expression. Perhaps relieved, too.

“Well, people being on ceremony around me all the time is…” He tried to put a word to it, something simple and understandable, bundling up the complex web of feelings, obligation and pride and loneliness, too. The way a canyon yawned between him and others, when there didn’t need to be one at all. “They’d call me ‘Your Highness’ so much that I’m afraid I’ll forget my name.”  
It was meant to be said with a smile, but it didn’t really turn out that way. An instructor had once told him (this was one of those academic fields that Gustave was not especially fond of) that there existed in Faerghus a king and a King. The king was his father – kind and brave and strong and sincere, who would shake Dimitri’s shoulders, who sometimes forgot where he left things. The King was embodied in his father, but just as much as he had been embodied by every king from Loog onward, perfect and immortal. The King was the Kingdom’s justice, the bringer of its laws, the keeper of its peace, to whom every knight was sworn with perfect loyalty. The king was dead; There was no justice and no peace, and somewhere, the King was living long and waiting for Dimitri to catch up.

All this was to say: His Highness would be the King, and wasn’t really a living person. It was a lot to live in, but Dimitri tried hard. Now, staring down the list at a world without his father or stepmother, without those friendly old servants or Glenn or  _ any of them _ , the people who filled his life with the sound of his own name, Dimitri felt sometimes the sinking pit that maybe  _ he _ wasn’t a living person anymore, either. 

“It makes me feel lonelier.” It hurt to say, living person or no. This drew Dedue back, drew him to lower the guard he’d put up. He sat down across from Dimitri and let himself slump into it. 

“So that is why you gave me your name to use. I had wondered...Why it was only me.” Dedue’s voice pulled Dimitri up from those thoughts, bobbing up in the quiet of his sitting room.

“Well, anyone’s free to… But I suppose my sort of introduction is something like that when I say it,” said Dimitri, though he hadn’t strictly thought about it like that; honestly he couldn’t recall even slightly how he’d introduced himself to Dedue. He remembered protecting him – the pain and relief, the fear and desperation, and at last the lightheaded triumph of being able to save someone, had been so intense he would never forget it – but the memories of that day and the ones following it were eaten into, a mix of brutal clarity and indistinct blurs. “It certainly feels more friendly, to be addressed by name.” In response, Dedue made a thoughtful grunt that understood he didn’t need more than an acknowledgement of it directly. 

They didn’t speak for a while, just sat. The room felt like an island, the paneled walls the last place where the sea of faces, changing out from familiar to strange at his uncle’s gesture, hadn’t breached. It was empty of old company – Sylvain had written back but was too busy to come, Ingrid was still in her room according to him, and every time Dimitri tried to apologize Felix just got more upset with him and he didn’t know what to do, or what to say, and it was so, so exhausting to try and bridge the gap between himself and his best friend. He didn’t know if he could. But even with that isolation, the room was still safe. And part of that was that in this sea, there was someone else. Just one other person.

“You must be lonely, too,” Dimitri said, reaching out across that emptiness with a hand. Goddess, Dedue had to be the loneliest person in the world right now. Dedue briefly touched his hand, his face inscrutable. His hand just rested gingerly in Dimitri’s, long, squared-off fingers resting across the line of Dimitri’s open palm. They floated like otters in the night, hand in hand, upon that dark water. 

When Dedue pulled his hand out, Dimitri thought for a moment it was his fault – he’d held it too hard. He hadn’t hurt Dedue yet, but that just meant he _wasn’t sure_ where the line was, and his stomach clenched at the thought of this being that moment.  
“...I will see about getting us food,” said Dedue abruptly, heading towards the door.

“Dedue?”

“I am hungry, and so you must be, too.” Judging them on the same internal clock of hunger seemed somewhat unfair, because Dedue had an appetite of a boy in the midst of a teenage growth spurt, and a formidable one at that. Dimitri, not there yet, couldn’t eat nearly so much even if his tongue hadn’t abandoned him. 

“I’m not especially…” He trailed off, because he couldn’t make it sound remotely convincing. Dedue was giving him a  _ look _ . As Dedue stepped into the doorway, Dimitri focused on what he really meant. “Dedue, did I say something wrong? I meant no offense.”

“...No.” Dedue sighed, his shoulders softening more than his face did. “...But I do not want to think of it right now.”

“Oh,” said Dimitri. He could understand why, in a moment where the loss had been thrown in his face, that might be hard to think of. “But should you – feel lonely, or think about feeling lonely – you know I am with you, right?” Because they had to be in this together. They  _ had to. _ It was selfish and it was terrible, but Dimitri needed it to be true… And he thought it was, but it would all be so much worse if he was wrong.

Dedue nodded slowly, perhaps just a little haltingly, in a way Dimitri did not know what to do with, and then he was away.

* * *

Whether or not Dedue wished it – in truth, he didn’t want to think of his homeland, far away, perhaps further and deader by the second, not when people had gotten done trying to use that homesickness as a wedge against him – the feelings did eventually hit him. Late that night, when he lay in a fine bed, buried under layers of blanket woven in a foreign pattern. Outside, rain lashed at his windows, watering down the inky blackness of the night into a grey wash. Thunder rolled, and with it, the ghost of a sound. He hadn’t been afraid of storms for a long time; Celi had been too young to mock him the last time he’d been afraid – when she knew enough to tease her big big brother about it,she’d missed her chance. 

His sister wasn’t here to jokingly ask if he was scared.

It didn’t scare him now. But when he had been scared of the thunder, he’d marched into the room his parents shared and crawled in the bed between them. And there, warm and sleepy and (he’d realized perhaps only now, miles and a decade away) perhaps secretly a little annoyed at being woken, his mother sang a little song of the god of the sky, bringer of storms, to let him know that they were friends there.

There were no friends of the sky-god here, and perhaps the god wouldn’t even hear him in this land, tended by its own patron goddess, and anyone here who heard the song would probably think it was strange, and he would never hear that voice again until he died. He didn’t know what to do about that. And he was horribly, horribly lonely. He stared up at his ceiling and for a long time, tried to battle down the feeling. It didn’t work.

The wind whistled, sending a spatter of rain hard against the window. And he remembered what Dimitri had said earlier… And the door was still there. He stood a moment, right near the panel that would open it. That he wanted someone there, that he knew no one else was, that he knew Dimitri  _ would _ understand, all battled in him with strange facts: part of him kept thinking about the  _ prince _ on the floor below, and how no one wanted him there and how he felt that hard; kept thinking that he was afraid that, whatever he said, Dimitri would think it silly, or that Dimitri, too, would be angry at being awoken, when sleep was so hard. And maybe – maybe Dedue wanted to get up in the morning, and keep going as if the night had never done this, and if he let himself collapse against Dimitri again, right now, he couldn’t do that. 

His shoulders slumped as he turned from the panel. He didn’t know if it was strength or weakness anymore. The storm was louder than before, intruding on him like a wave; the windowpanes flashed with some not-so-distant lightning, rattled in their iron with the thunder. A little part of him shuddered and waited for a song that never came.

Dedue looked down, and hoped Dimitri truly was there with him, even if he’d never know. But that thought moved him, stripped itself naked of all caveats, as he sank to the floor beside his bed. He reached down and – sure the sound would be eaten by the stone and mortar and wood between them – knocked. The way he always did, once hard, and then, at first sincerely, and now as a tradition, two more softly. Nothing happened, of course. The summer storm’s winds continued to sweep over the castle’s walls until it whistled off the buildings.

And then, a knock from beneath his feet. One hard. And two soft. Dedue laughed sadly, and felt the heat of his tears against his eyes. He knocked again. The knock in response was much more immediate than the one before. Dedue began to tap a pattern, putting a bit of work into it, the sing-song up-and-down of the little storm song, until he gradually heard Dimitri repeat it back to him, and then with him. To Dimitri, it must not have meant anything at all – it only meant that Dimitri was with him.

Dedue’s voice crooned out his mother’s song, off-key where his voice was too low for the notes as he recalled them; it cracked when he tried to reach them, and so he tried to keep the sound soft, low. It was embarrassing – and it really sounded nothing like her, any more than Dimitri’s deliberate knocking did – and it did nothing to stop the sound of the thunder outside. But it filled the night with the sounds of two people, there and lonely and with one another, even after the knocking from below slowed, skipping beats, fell silent the way Dedue’s voice did, as the two of them drifted off to sleep together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: J is for Javelin. I don't have a joke about that, so it's not going to be for Joke.


End file.
